Red in Tooth and Claw
by CV12Hornet
Summary: War rages with the Abyss, and all the shipgirls of the world have been summoned, save for one: Enterprise. Despite many attempts, she remains unsummoned. Or, at least, that's what humanity thinks. Three years is a long time to spend behind enemy lines...
1. Chapter 1

**AN: It's funny what a picture can spark.**

 **I originally wasn't planning to expand this story beyond this initial chapter, but after some thought I decided to finish this story for the NaNoWriMo challenge. Sadly, I came up a little under 2000 words short, but I didn't want to drag out the story.**

 **And yes, this means every chapter is written. No chance of this dying before completion! Expect releases on a M-W-F schedule until it's complete.**

 **Enjoy!**

~o~

" _Another failure."_

" _We can't continue doing this. These are resources better spent on other shipgirls, shipgirls we can actually summon."_

" _Agreed. Though, I wonder…"_

" _Hm?"_

" _Why doesn't she come? Is it because we scrapped her instead of turning her into a museum? Is it simply because she's tired and no longer wants to fight?"_

" _I don't think it matters why she's not coming. What matters is one, inescapable fact that we need to accept."_

" _Enterprise is not coming."_

~o~

The year is 2019. Shit is fucked.

July 7, 2016 is a day that will live in infamy, for it is then that the creatures known as the Abyss announced their presence to the world. Taking the form of women with chalk-white skin and monsters and machinery attached to them, they attacked without warning, without any reason anyone could discern. Norfolk, Malta, Hawaii, and Singapore fell within hours, caught completely by surprise. And though the Abyssals quickly left Norfolk, it was clear everywhere else that they were here to stay.

The navies of humanity tried to fight back, of course. But with half the US Navy, the most powerful on Earth, sunk on the first day, it was all they could do not to be annihilated in their retreat. The Abyssals were endless, and something about them interfered with targeting and detection systems, even aside from the fact that most naval weapons were _not_ designed with human-sized targets in mind.

Luckily for the world, salvation had also delivered itself on that black day. Newport News and the vital shipyards there escaped destruction as a towering blond woman with glasses and backpack sporting nine 16" guns appeared on the water to drive them off. And days after that, two more women carrying battleship guns arrived at the head of a convoy of Hawaiian refugees. Wisconsin, Missouri, and Arizona thus became the first of the kantai musume, or shipgirls.

Japan led the way in research into this new phenomenon, their Shinto traditions easily accepting their existence and offering tantalizing hints on ways to call them. Within a year, the majority of the ships of World War II had been summoned; by 2018, all were summoned, tactics had been developed, and the line had been held.

Despite the success, four stretches of ocean remain the domain of the Abyssals. Malta and the surrounding waters are the province of the Island Siege Empress, spewing out battleships and swift cruisers to attack the shores of Sicily and Tunisia. The Suez Canal is closed, unlikely to reopen any time soon. Opposing her are the shipgirls of Italy, France, Turkey, Greece, and the UK's Mediterranean Fleet, and it is all they can do to contain her. The North Atlantic is the domain of the Submarine Empress. Airpower keeps her forces away from the coasts, and massive convoys are run across the Atlantic, bearing vital goods to Europe and escorted by the shipgirls of Germany, Canada, the UK, and the USA. Submarines are the threat here, and SSNs have proved invaluable in aiding the shipgirls. The Central Pacific is ruled by the Harbor Empress, striking at the convoys running along the North and South Pacific to Japan and Australia, respectively, and sending periodic forays towards the West Coast of North America and Japan. And finally, the Fortress Empress sits on her throne in Singapore, ruler of a domain that stretches from Sumatra and Borneo to the highlands of New Guinea; an area of land and sea that once held 200 million people, and now only holds ghosts.

The Re-class battleship sitting on a beach in Oahu with her hood down knew very little of this. All she knew was that Honolulu looked very pretty being taken over by nature, and that soon she would be going on the Hunt again.

She wasn't worried, at least, not about herself. She was a Re-class, the most feared Abyssal type on the high seas that wasn't an Installation. And besides, she was the Hunter. The only one to walk away from more than one Hunt. She knew what she needed to do to survive.

Her tail suddenly perked up, turning to look at something behind her. The crunch of footsteps on sand followed soon afterward. The Hunter didn't turn around, instead letting the Ta-class battleship come to a halt next to her.

[Who'd you bring?] the Hunter said after a moment.

[Two Ne-class,] the other battleship replied. [They're waiting at the mouth of the harbor.]

The Hunter nodded. A small force, but fast and with heavy firepower. A good combination for the Hunt. [When were you all summoned?]

[Just last week!] the Ta chirped, suddenly cheerful. [Oh, I can't wait to take on the Grey Ghost! I'll be the best of my sisters once we beat her!]

The Hunter resisted the urge to sigh. Newbies. The Empress probably didn't want to keep burning scarce veterans on the Hunt. Instead, she stood and stepped out into the surf, her hooves quickly gaining purchase on the surface and allowing her to steam away from the beach. The Ta followed shortly thereafter, still grinning widely.

[So!] the battleship said. [Any advice for me?]

[Don't let her get close,] the Hunter intoned. [And don't expect anything you do to actually kill her.]

[Aw, but that's just what they told us in the briefing!] the Ta whined.

[That's because it's the best advice you can get.]

Silence fell over the two battleships as the Ta pouted and the Hunter lapsed into her usual silence. Luckily for her sanity, the two heavy cruisers were similarly quiet, and as they moved out from Hawaii she ran over the information given on the Grey Ghost's whereabouts. She'd hit a supply convoy heading out to the Marianas garrison not even a day prior, typical behavior for her, and would likely still be there once they arrived in the region.

The next three days passed quickly, broken by periodic and unsuccessful attempts by the Ta to socialize. This eventually sent her into a sullen silence, and by the sunset on the third day the Hunter was seriously considering telling a story just to snap her out of it. A ping on her sonar, though, caught her attention.

[I have an underwater contact,] she reported.

[It's probably one of our own submarines,] the Ta replied dismissively. [Ignore it.]

While that idea made sense, the Hunter's instincts were screaming at her. Something was wrong.

[Huh?]

All eyes turned to the trailing Ne, but while the Ta and the other Ne were looking at her face, the Hunter's eyes were down to the heavy cruiser's ankles, where a slim, white, red-clawed hand was gripping one of them.

' _That's new,'_ some part of the Hunter's brain noted, and she opened her mouth to shout a warning, only for the hand to yank down and drag the Ne-class underwater. She raised her tail, depth charges loaded, but the Ta grabbed it before she could fire.

[What are you doing?!] she demanded.

[Trying to kill our target, you fool!] the Hunter snarled back. [That heavy cruiser is dead, and you just cost me a chance at damaging her!]

[But-!]

The other heavy cruiser's protest was cut off by a figure bursting out of the water and grabbing her from behind, claws pressed to her throat. The Ta hesitated. The Hunter didn't, her tail firing both guns at her obscured target. At such a short range, she couldn't miss, but with her opponent mostly obscured by her impromptu hostage, both shells hit the heavy cruiser, penetrated, and detonated, carving two large chunks out of her torso and leaving her slumped over, dead.

The Grey Ghost - for that's all she could be - promptly shoved the dead heavy cruiser off to the side and into the water, and manifested a massive slab of razor-edged metal in her hand. Golden eyes locked on the Ta-class battleship, and the Abyssal flinched, taking a step back and aiming her shaking guns at the figure before her.

[A-All batteries, fire!]

Eight heavy guns barked, and the Grey Ghost _moved_. Four shells went wide, smacking harmlessly into their opponent's wake. Three hit the raised slab in her hand, exploding to no effect, and the last was obscured by the resulting cloud of smoke.

A shaky grin appeared on the Ta-class' face as she observed the smoke cloud. [Ha… hahahahaha! She's dead! I killed her! I can't believe everyone else had so… much…]

The triumphant rant trailed off as the smoke cleared, revealing the Grey Ghost untouched except for a few rents in the metal slab she carried, which was now swinging for her torso. Stunned, the Abyssal battleship only barely managed to catch the edge of the slab on her arms.

Of course, it promptly carved through her arms and most of her torso anyway, so that didn't help.

As the Ta slipped, bleeding, beneath the waves, the Grey Ghost stood, and the Hunter had a chance to observe her longtime nemesis. She wore a white sailor top with a black tie, baring her midriff. A black half-cape, trimmed in gold, covered her shoulders, and a miniskirt of the same design brushed against her thighs; all three articles were frayed and tattered on the bottom edge. Long white gloves with gold stripes covered her arms, tipped with red claws; a red gorget made of Abyssal teeth protected her throat; armored boots with gold seams covered her calves; and a black, armored hat with gold seams and a peeking Abyssal eye completed the ensemble. The metal slab was revealed to be a flight deck, a bright yellow 6 emblazoned on it and rimmed by a red metal sponson all along its edge, razor-sharp and sporting sixteen twin 3" mounts of the type used by I-class destroyers for anti-air. Her skin was pale white, not the chalk of Abyssals but much lighter than the shipgirls she'd seen, though her thighs had the appearance of metal plating instead. Long red hair, half drawn into a ponytail held with a star-shaped tie, cascaded down her back and front. And then there were her gold eyes, quite at home above the confident smirk she sported.

The two eyed each other for a long moment, before the Grey Ghost spoke up.

"Are you going to try and fight me?" she asked.

[No,] the Hunter replied. [I like being alive.]

The shipgirl nodded. "Smart. Alright, go in peace or whatever. I've got bigger things to worry about than you."

And with that, she ducked underwater again.

[Definitely new,] the Hunter muttered. [Seriously, when did she learn to do that?]

The Hunter filed away the mystery for later before turning around and steaming away. Yes, this was how she survived hunt after hunt: by being smart enough to know when to just walk away.

~o~

Enterprise surfaced near the coast of Sarigan island, the three Abyssal corpses stashed away in an underwater cave for future repairs. Well, aside from an arm taken from the Ta to patch up her flight deck. One quick climb up the sheer cliffs of the island later, she walked over to a palm tree set back from the rocks and surrounded by grass, and slumped against it, her flight deck dropped at her side.

Almost immediately, her fairies swarmed out of her, most heading for her battered - again - flight deck. Miniature welding torches came out, cutting into the arm and cutting out armor plating for reuse. More could be felt inspecting a gash in her side where one of the Ta's shells had nicked her. But one instead stood on her shoulder, glaring cutely at her.

"Hey!" it barked.

"I know, I know," Enterprise sighed, raising her hands up. "I'm running out of time."

Said hands were shaking uncontrollably, and the carrier could feel a hundred other minor aches, tears, and other sundry bits of damage spread throughout her. Her damcon fairies had worked miracles over the last three years, but without a proper shipyard they could only slow the accumulation of damage, and many of those miracles had had… side effects.

As if on cue, a shudder wracked her body, and she hunched over with a grunt of pain, her hand shooting up to cover her face. Her jaw clenched as the desire to _maimburnkill_ ran through her, red creeping into her vision.

" _Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will only be spoken in Hell!"_

After an eternal ten seconds, the moment passed, and Enterprise drew her hand away, noting the sheen of red blood covering it.

"In more ways than one," she muttered.

A small hand pressed against her jaw, and she glanced to the side to see her shoulder-fairy looking up at her with warm concern. "Hey," it said softly.

A slight smile spread over her face. "Don't worry, we'll muddle through," she said, reaching out to pat the fairy on the head. The fairy huffed and crossed its arms in a pout, but notably didn't protest.

"Hey!"

Enterprise glanced down to her side, where instead of a bleeding gash there was now smooth metal, waiting for skin to grow back to cover it.

"Good job, you guys!" Enterprise said, shooting a thumbs up at the spot. A frisson of satisfaction ran through from her fairies, and the carrier leaned back against her tree. "How long do I have?"

Her shoulder fairy hummed thoughtfully, tapping its chin. "Hey," it finally said after several minutes.

"Four months, give or take three and a half, huh?" Enterprise repeated, gazing out over the ocean. "Time to check up on Guam again, I think."

~o~

Fleet carrier Zuikaku strode through the halls of the Yokosuka District Headquarters, heading for the office of Admiral Goto. All around her, the noise of the human and shipgirl personnel of the District washed over her, utterly unchanged from a few months prior. She appreciated that. Civilians - and even sailors from other districts - had a bad tendency towards hero worship, and while fun at first, it had quickly gotten annoying.

And the worst part was that she couldn't claim, even in private, that it was undeserved hero worship! She had, after all, been the last carrier standing for half of Operation Lexus, something that practically begged for comparisons to Enterprise.

Zuikaku grimaced at that. The Enterprise comparisons were the worst part of it. The legendary carrier had never been summoned despite numerous attempts to do so, and the public - at least in Japan and the United States - had been quite desperate to find a substitute. In the US Navy, the younger Hornet had ended up stepping into that role, and by all accounts she did a good job with it. In Japan, it had been a dead heat between her and Hiryu, but Operation Lexus had tipped the scales entirely in her favor.

Still, as long as she stayed out of comments sections on the internet, she didn't have to deal with it if she didn't want to. And with that thought, she reached the Admiral's office and pulled the door open.

The Admiral's office was split into two rooms, an outer waiting room where secretary ship Ooyodo was sitting at her desk doing her work, and an inner office where Admiral Goto worked. As Zuikaku walked into the outer office, she saw Atago, Nagato, and Yahagi sitting there as well.

"Heeeey, Zuikaku!" the blonde heavy cruiser chirped, waving, as the carrier sat down next to them.

"Admiral Goto isn't available yet?" she asked.

"The Admiral is… occupied with another appointment," Nagato replied, her brows drawn into an annoyed scowl.

The question of _who_ that appointment was with was answered as the door was flung open, a flushed, frazzled-looking Admiral Goto holding it that way.

"Out!" he shouted, jabbing his finger towards the outer door.

"Oh, FINE, Admiral," fast battleship Kongo sniffed as she pranced - pranced! - out of his office. "But don't think you're RID OF ME, desu!"

The minute the battleship was gone, Admiral Goto slumped to the floor, head in his hands. Zuikaku let out an 'oh' of understanding.

"So Kongo was distracting him again," she said.

"Yes," Nagato grit out.

The room lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, Zuikaku and Atago soon fidgeting in their seats, that lasted until Ooyodo cleared her throat.

"Admiral, your 2:30 appointment is here," she said, not even looking up from her work.

"Right," came Admiral Goto's reply, muffled by his legs. He slowly stood up, his expression despondent, and then he slapped himself in the face. As the four shipgirls waiting watched in shock and more than a little horror, his expression melted into one of careful neutrality, and he turned his attention to them, beckoning into his office. "Shall we?"

"S-Sure," Nagato replied. Goto nodded, and walked into his office, and as the quartet stood she shot a fearful look at her three comrades. "I just saw that, right? The Admiral just slapped himself into sensibility?"

"Yes, you did," Yahagi bit out. "And now, we are going to go in there, and we are never going to speak of this again. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Zuikaku and Atago chroused.

With that pledge, they filed into the office and sat down, waiting for Admiral Goto to re-organize some papers that had clearly been scattered by Typhoon Kongo.

"Alright," the Admiral said after a few minutes. "Well, first, I have some bad news. It's being suppressed, but I doubt it will remain that way for long, and I think you should hear this from me." He paused, seeming to collect his thoughts. "Two days ago, Britain and Ireland fell to the Abyss."

Once again, silence descended, the four shipgirls in front of him staring in shock and horror with wide eyes and dropped jaws.

"What," Zuikaku finally managed to get out after a few minutes.

"H-How…" Atago breathed, looking close to tears.

"The Home Fleet was understrength, with most of their force committed to Operation Royce," Admiral Goto explained. "The Abyssals ambushed them in Scapa, and very few of them escaped. The Germans and the Channel Fleet only bought enough time to evacuate a few hundred thousand people, and the latter's casualties were horrendous."

"And with Britain gone, we need to start clearing the Central Pacific ASAP so we can reinforce Europe," Yahagi divined. "So, the Marianas first, or Minami-Tori-shima?"

The light cruiser fidgeted in agitation as everyone in the room stared at her. "A-A samurai should know of such things to best advise her lord," she said defensively. "And Fubuki uses me to bounce ideas off of."

"Well," Goto said after a moment, shaking his head. "You're right. We're pushing to the Marianas. The details are being finalized, but expect a deployment comparable to Operation Lexus. The Americans will also be making another push west to catch the Abyssals' attention in the Eastern Pacific."

"If it ain't broke don't fix it, huh?" Zuikaku chuckled.

"Precisely. X-day has been set one week from now," Goto continued. "Since you're the leaders of your respective ship types, I expect you to help prepare your comrades for this operation. It will be higher intensity, but lower duration, and will likely require specialized training; accuracy in fire support will be essential." The Admiral reached down, retrieving several manila envelopes, and passed them out. "These are the details. Familiarize yourself, and familiarize your division mates. Dismissed!"

Zuikaku, Nagato, Yahagi, and Atago all stood and saluted with a bark of "Yes, sir!", before bustling out of the office. The group soon split up, Atago and Yahagi heading for the cruiser dorm and Nagato and Zuikaku heading for the dorms jointly shared by the battleships and fleet carriers. Still surrounded by the bustle of the base, they kept quiet, neither willing to speak both due to secrecy and the magnitude of the information they'd been given.

"Goddamn," Zuikaku breathed out as they passed out of the public parts of the base, tension flowing from her shoulders. "Britain. Fucking _Britain_. We haven't suffered a loss like this since the Black Day."

"Yes, which makes this operation even more important," Nagato stated. "More than the military value, the world needs a victory, a large one, if we are to ensure it does not fall into despair."

"Yeah…" the carrier agreed, her eyes shut. "Still, why did it have to be the Marianas. Shokaku and I have bad memories of that place."

"You'll be able to handle it," Nagato stated, much like a child would state that the sky was blue. "And I believe you will be stronger for it."

A grin spread over Zuikaku's face at that. "Heh. Believe in me that believes in you?"

The battleship turned and threw her a mock glare. "Gurren Lagann is a very good show, and can be very wise."

"I'd never say otherwise," Zuikaku assured her, the line accompanied by a hearty slap on the back, which sent Nagato pitching forward. "Oh, uh… sorry."

"Apology accepted."

~o~

Enterprise yawned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she steamed towards Guam. Abyssal activity around the island had been mostly normal for the last week, forcing her to stay out at sea and awake the whole time, but for some reason the Abyssals had cleared out since the previous evening, giving her an opportunity to get in close.

By the time Guam was in sight, she _still_ hadn't seen any Abyssals, and while that was somewhat worrying, her instincts told her that she could safely get closer. Apra Harbor soon came into view; still no Abyssals. Taking a deep breath, she steamed into the harbor itself, a growl of anger bubbling up from within her at the sight of nature taking over the former Naval Base Guam and the port to the north.

"I probably shouldn't've expected the Abyssals to maintain the island," she muttered. "But it still pisses me off!"

Grumbling, she pulled herself up onto one of the concrete piers, her foot hitting something that wasn't a rock. Glancing down, her eyes widened at the sight of a can of Spam.

Enterprise fell to her knees, eyes shining, and she reached out and poked the can. Then again. Once she was convinced the can was real, she grabbed it and tore the top of the can off. The sight of glistening pink meat-like substance greeted her, and with another yank she tore off one of the sides of the can before emptying the whole thing into her mouth, heedless of the fact that it was almost certainly three years old.

Flavor exploded over her tongue, salty and savory. She began to chew, slowly, both due to the size of the hunk of meat and also a desire to savor the flavor. Having subsisted on a diet of raw fish, Abyssal guts, and straight bunker oil for almost three years, even Spam was the next thing to heavenly.

"Oooohh…" she moaned, meat juice and saliva dribbling down her chin. "So gooooood…"

Finally, she had to swallow, though it came in flavor-lengthening bits. Sadly, no matter how she stretched it out, the outcome was the same: no more Spam.

"Aww…" Enterprise whined, glancing around. "I wonder if I can find any more cans…"

The buzzing of a propellor plane caught her attention, and she glanced up to the sight of a Japanese Aichi E13A floatplane, as her recognition fairies dutifully informed her. She flinched, hand shooting up to her face as those words flashed through her mind again.

" _Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will only be spoken in Hell!"_

Luckily, the plane was also accompanied by the distant thunder of battleship gunfire, which served to snap her out of her fugue before it could get any worse.

"We won the War," she muttered to herself. "I don't need to be hostile to them."

Even to her, the words sounded hollow. But if there were Japanese ships nearby, they were her best bet to get out of this and get some proper repairs. She'd just have to keep a lid on her other persona, like every other time it'd surfaced.

With her resolve set, Enterprise hopped back onto the water and steamed out of the harbor and towards the sound of gunfire, constantly scanning the horizon and wishing she still had her long-broken radar or any SBDs.

After an hour of steaming, she was close enough to the action to get an idea of what was going on. There was a large battleship duel going on, and then close in front a wild furball joined by period puffs of flack.

Of more immediate importance was a smaller battle going on about fifteen miles distant that looked to be a cruiser action of some kind. That seemed like an eminently better fight to get involved in than the roaring gun duel on the horizon or the swirling fighter-on-bomber action in the sky.

Slowly, Enterprise crept towards the fight, a pack of Abyssal heavy cruisers trading 8" shells with their Japanese counterparts. Said Abyssals were also totally occupied by their fight, and as a stray Long Lance nearly blasted her foot off, the carrier had to admit they had good reason to be so focused.

Not that that would stop her from taking advantage of their distraction, of course.

The first heavy cruiser, a Ri-class, was messily bisected before it even knew there was a threat coming. The other heavy cruisers pivoted around - and promptly ate several 8" shells each. Between the incoming fire and Enterprise tearing them all superfluous new orifices, it wasn't long before the heavy cruisers were so much scrap sinking before the waves.

That just left the Japanese cruisers and destroyers slowly steaming towards her, and for a moment Enterprise believed she could go without losing control.

Then she actually got a proper look at them, and it all went to hell.

" _Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will only be spoken in Hell!"_

The words flowed through her head, stuck on repeat, and she slumped to the ground, one hand propping her flight deck against the water, and the other clutching her face.

' _No! Not again!'_

And to her horror, the first set of words were drowned out by another, a mantra pounding in her skull, trying to get out.

" _Kill Japs. Kill Japs. Kill more Japs."_

Red swarmed into her vision. Her muscles tensed, jaw clenching into a tight snarl. As her helmet slid over her eyes and she felt blood flow from her eyes, she had time for only one more thought.

' _I'm sorry.'_

~o~

Ashigara examined the strange shipgirl that had saved them a lot of trouble. Yes, she had been instrumental in breaking up the Abyssal cruiser force without the expenditure of more of their limited torpedo stock, but many of the details of her appearance were deeply alarming. The preponderance of red and black in her clothing contrasted with extremely pale skin, what looked like Abyssal parts were scattered across her body, and of course, there was the iron slab simultaneously masquerading as a sword and a flight deck.

When she suddenly hunched over, Ashigara's concern ratcheted up into outright worry.

"Gnnnrrr **rrrrr!"** the mysterious shipgirl growled, a wild, feral growl that sent shivers down the heavy cruiser's spine. The odd hat on her head slotted down over her eyes and began glowing red. The gold trim and seams on her outfit suddenly shifted to red, and odd spots of purple spread over previously red surfaces. But the worst part was the combination of murderous rage and panicked guilt Ashigara had glimpsed on her face before the hel- no, mask, slipped over her face. The Japanese cruiser tensed, ready for combat.

She was not ready for the carrier to suddenly sprint forward, sword raised in an overhand chop. Myoko, her target, frantically threw her rudder to port, and while her body got away, the strike chopped off one of her shoulder-mounted 8" turrets, along with the poofy sleeve it was attached to. Nachi and Haguro immediately fired salvos, but the sword came up again, sweeping through the firing arcs and catching the shells and harmlessly detonating them.

With her sisters engaged, Ashigara frantically ran through her options. The strange shipgirl was clearly too fast and too well-protected with her flight deck to easily stop her through gunfire, an assessment confirmed by her continued survival against three heavy cruisers firing as fast as they could. Kitakami was out of torpedoes, and she didn't relish the idea of pitting thin-skinned destroyers against an opponent capable of cleaving through heavy cruisers. She grimaced as the only option came to mind. This was going to _hurt._

Surging forward, Ashigara swept past Nachi and Haguro, and as Myoko dodged out of the way of another attack from the strange shipgirl, she came to a halt inside the swing and grabbed the carrier's wrists.

Both shipgirls' turbines surged as they pressed against each other, madness-enhanced strength matching against strength magnified by protective instincts. It was a stalemate.

Ironically, it was not her sisters that delivered the blow that she was waiting for. Instead, it was a stray Val, from Akagi judging from the unit markings, that dove in and dropped a bomb right on top of her opponent's strange headgear, smashing it to pieces. The carrier pitched forward, eyes vacant and the red bleeding out of her outfit. Ashigara caught her, wincing as the action jostled muscles and turbines that had been straining to match her opponent. She also made sure to grab the flight deck, making note of the gold 6 on it.

"I'm sorry, but…" Kitakami said as she steamed up. "What the fuck was that?!"

"I don't know," Myoko said, sounding rather shaken. "Maybe it was an Abyssal experiment gone wrong?"

Ashigara shifted her grip on the strange shipgirl, gratefully passing the flight deck over to Haguro as her youngest sister passed by. "I know what's going on here," she announced. "Call Yokosuka. Tell them we've found Enterprise."

Ignoring the shouts of surprise, Ashigara took a closer look at the carrier in her arms, seeing details she hadn't been able to at a distance. And the picture they printed was not pretty.

"Don't worry," she whispered, stroking Enterprise's cheek. "You're safe now."


	2. Chapter 2

Enterprise's return to wakefulness was slow and didn't get very far, leaving her in a half-conscious haze. Unlike most cases of such waking, though, the reason was not due to anything wrong, but to sheer comfort. Something was encompassing her whole body, something impossibly soft and warm.

"Hey."

Her first instinct was to compare it to a blanket. But a blanket was a seriously inadequate comparison. Her next was to think that this was what being wrapped up in a cloud felt like. But no, it was a little _too_ substantial for that, and besides, weren't clouds cold?

"Hey!"

Whatever she was wrapped up in, it felt really comfortable, so the carrier decided to not worry about _what_ it was and instead enjoy that it was there.

"HEY!"

Slowly, and with great reluctance, Enterprise cracked her eyes open to a round, chubby face with beady eyes staring at her, an annoyed scowl marring the adorable features. Then the fairy nodded and stepped back, throwing up a salute.

"Hey."

"Oh, it's you," Enterprise said. "Why'd you have to wake me up?"

The fairy grinned smugly and crossed its arms. Enterprise sighed, and closed her eyes, but to her frustration, that state of zen half-awakening she had been in was gone. So instead, she opened her eyes again and properly took in her state and her surroundings.

The room she was in was small, but cozy instead of cramped, and in a facade of blue and white tile. Additional white tile coated the floor, and a line of faucets and stools lined her left side. Glancing down revealed the source of the warmth encompassing her to be the hot water of a smooth, porcelain bath, albeit one closer in size to a large hot tub than she remembered most bathtubs being. This also revealed that she was completely naked, which was much less distressing than she'd expected it to be.

"Probably all those times I bathed out in the Pacific," she muttered, before turning back to the fairy on her chest. "So. How'm I doing?"

The fairy hummed, tapping its chin, and pulled out a radio, barking into it. "Hey! Hey hey hey." Soft fairy voices sounded out on the airwave, and the fairy nodded. "Hey. Hey hey."

Stowing the radio, the fairy turned back to its ship. "Hey… hey hey hey. Hey!"

One red eyebrow quirked up. "Wait…" Enterprise said slowly. "You're saying that this soak in a bath is fixing me up?"

The fairy nodded, and then shrugged.

"Well, I'm sure not going to complain," Enterprise groaned as she sank a bit deeper into the bath. "Oh, this is nice…"

The minutes slipped by as the carrier regained some of her earlier zen state in the hot, moist air of the bathhouse, the fairy slipping away while she was distracted. Eventually, though, she was brought out of her bliss again, this time by a door she hadn't noticed earlier opening. A head, topped with pink hair and framed by two brush-like tails in front, as well as distinctly Oriental features, poked itself in.

A shudder went through Enterprise, but it was easily suppressed. The newcomer was a Japanese shipgirl, but for some reason the Grey Ghost was quiet. Well, best not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.

"Don't worry, I won't bite," she called out - in English, something she realized ten seconds after she said it.

"That's good," the shipgirl replied in slightly accented English, a smile spreading over her face. "Those fangs look sharp."

Enterprise felt a smile spread across her own face at the joke, and she took in the newcomer as she stepped in fully. Warm but tired brown eyes sat above the soft smile she wore, her pink hair now clearly going down past her back. She wore a white sailor top trimmed in blue and sporting a red ribbon. Grey sleeves and turtleneck peeked out from under it. Below, she wore a rather short pleated blue skirt with a red trim, and then brown thigh-high… somethings. The oddest part was the armor plating covering her right shoulder and leg.

"I'm Akashi, repair ship for the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force," she said. "I'll be in charge of getting your rather impressive array of damage patched up. So, how are you feeling, overall?"

"Honestly, doc, I'm feeling great," the carrier replied, poking a thumbs-up out of the water. "I don't know how a _bath,_ of all things, is fixing me up, but my fairies told me that it is, and this is pleasant enough that I think I can live with the impossibility." An irreverent grin spread over her face. "So, give it to me straight: how long do I have to live?"

Akashi rolled her eyes, then reached out and gave her patient's forehead a hearty flick. "Well, I can confirm you're not going to go keel up in the next week, so there's that," she answered, ignoring the surprised yelp the action drew. "A more complete diagnosis will have to wait until after I talk to the fairies I have doing diagnostics."

Enterprise suddenly stiffened. "Wait. You have your fairies going through my hull?"

"Go on, get it out of your system," Akashi said, waving her hand.

To her surprise, instead of the usual reaction, the carrier glared at her chest. "And you guys thought this wasn't worth mentioning?!" After a moment, she threw her hands up in disgust. "'You didn't ask'. How the hell was I supposed to know to ask?!"

Akashi giggled into her fist as Enterprise continued glaring at her chest, where her fairies presumably were. Still, she had a job to do, so she put her fingers to her hands and let out a shrill whistle. A second, and then four fairies in orange coveralls and hard hats popped up on Enterprise's shoulders.

"Desu!" all four barked.

"You've finished the diagnosis?" Akashi asked.

"Desu!"

"Excellent!"

The repair ship held out her hand, and all four fairies hopped on.

"You focus on getting better, alright, Enterprise?" she said as she stowed her fairies. "Like I said before, you have a lot of damage to recover from."

"Don't need to tell me twice…" the carrier groaned, sinking deeper into the tub. As such, she missed the frown that formed on Akashi's face as she turned to leave.

~o~

Captain James Lofton paced in front of the door to the long-term repair dock, his hands clasped behind his back and his face a mask of barely-repressed tension. Behind him, Admiral Aritomo Goto, commander of the Kanmusu Corps, as it was popularly known, sat in a chair, playing something on his phone.

As some sort of action prompted a muffled curse from the Japanese admiral, Captain Lofton spun on his heel, staring incredulously at Admiral Goto. "How can you be so calm?!" he demanded.

"It's not _my_ shipgirl in there getting patched up," Goto absently replied. "That, and Akashi can take care of herself."

Any further discussion was called when Akashi stepped out of the door again, closing it behind her.

"So?" Lofton practically demanded, coming to a halt. "What's the diagnosis?"

"I think she should be scrapped," Akashi bluntly stated. "She has serious metal fatigue, her wiring is substandard, her equipment is inadequate for this war, and her brain is like a demilitarized zone."

"Are… Are you paraphrasing a Ghostbusters quote about a building to describe a _person?"_

"It's a good movie," Akashi shrugged. "More importantly, none of what I said was untrue. With the number of microfractures she has, her damcon fairies are goddamn miracle workers for not letting her fall apart six months ago." The repair ship grimaced, fingering the spot where her twin 5" mount would normally be. "Of course, considering she's at least a quarter Abyssal now, I'm not sure if I should really be praising them."

Lofton froze, and the statement was even enough to bring Goto away from his game. "Are you serious?" the latter demanded.

"Remember her legs?" Akashi replied. "It doesn't just look like she has metal bolted to her thighs. She _does_ have metal bolted to her thighs, because her legs are made of salvaged Abyssal material from that point down. Then there's her hat, and all the contaminated oil and metal she's ingested; honestly, it's a miracle she's still on our side at all."

"Jesus," Lofton muttered, running a hand through his hair.

"No wonder she went berserk upon seeing Ashigara's task force," Goto surmised. "Between this and any lingering… issues from the war…"

"I suspect I didn't trigger anything only because I'm not combat ship," Akashi added. "We'll need a warning not to go in there - and guards, because let's be honest, a warning isn't going to stop a lot of our shipgirls."

Goto let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a shuddering groan, and Lofton patted a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

"Can we fix this?" Lofton said once Goto had composed himself again.

"Honestly, Captain, I doubt it," Akashi sighed. "Enterprise has been adding this stuff to her for years now. It's as much a part of her as her normal parts are. It'd probably be easier to just sink her and re-summon her."

" _Can_ we do that? Would that work?"

Akashi and Captain Lofton turned to Goto, who was looking thoughtful.

"I mean, her sinking would presumably mean her spirit would return to… wherever it is we summon them from," he elaborated. "And if it does, then we should be able to call it again."

Lofton and Akashi exchanged nervous glances. "Well, why don't we table that idea until the eggheads have looked at it for a month or forever," Captain Lofton nervously replied.

"Agreed," Akashi said, shuddering.

A roaring grumble sounded out from the repair dock, and Akashi grinned and turned towards the mess.

"In the meantime, I'd better get her some food. Oh, her reaction should be _great_."

~o~

Enterprise glared at her mutinous stomach. "Oh, shut up," she snapped. "I had that can of Spam, and I ate a stick the night before. What more do you want?"

Her stomach wisely didn't respond, and the carrier sank back into the water, thoughts running through her head. Thoughts she'd managed to keep suppressed up until now, and that Akashi's appearance had jogged again. After all, if the Japanese had summoned their ships, it stood to reason that the United States Navy had done the same.

"Yorkie…" she muttered. "Hornet… Wasp... Aunt Lexie… Northampton…"

Regrets. So many regrets. Her sisters, Aunt Lexie, all sunk because she couldn't save them, hadn't been _good enough_. Northampton, split off from her escort just to sink. And as much as those events gnawed at her, it was what she'd become afterward that truly burned, after three years of reflection. Snapping at Aunt Sara, ignoring her screens, shunning the Essexes, especially the earnestly enthusiastic Hornet…

"Gah, dammit, I'm brooding again," Enterprise grumbled, slapping her cheeks. "Remember that promise, E: abandon your fear, always move forward." Her hands fell, clenching into fists at her sides. "I will _not_ let history repeat itself. Not on my watch."

Her stomach picked that moment to grumble again, and the carrier returned to glaring at it. "Way to ruin the mood," she muttered. She eyed the room, trying to find something to distract her, and her eyes fell on one of the steel faucets lining the wall. A steel faucet that looked impossibly delicious at that moment.

"Ah, geez, I really am hungry," she said, wiping a spot of drool from her cheek. "How long have I been out, anyway? Akashi didn't mention that."

Seconds after she completed that thought, the door swung open, admitting a shipgirl she didn't recognize. She sported long brown hair held up by a red ribbon, a white apron over a long blue skirt and gray shirt, and a motherly smile that sent a pang through Enterprise's heart. And more importantly, she was wheeling in front of her a cart stacked high with food.

Steaming piles of grilled meat, several whole grilled fish, vegetables and rice galore, a stew-like concoction steaming from a pot that smelled absolutely amazing, another pot of a steaming, thin soup, a basket filled with something doughy, and the crowner: a jumbo refrigerated tub of ice cream, accompanied by several glass cups and a variety of toppings.

"Hello, dear!" the shipgirl - no, her savior - announced, also in slightly accented English, as she wheeled the food cart up to the edge of the tub. "I'm Mamiya, one of the food supply ships here in Yokosuka. Akashi informed me you were hungry."

The small part of her mind that wasn't gibbering over the veritable feast in front of her filed away her location for later. The rest was too busy making sure her saliva glands were putting in overtime.

Mamiya giggled as drool dripped down into the water. "And I see she was understating things!" Bending over, she retrieved a large tray and unfolded it before placing it over the tub, stretching from side to side. A fork, knife, spoon, and small bowl were placed on top of it, and Enterprise immediately snatched up the former, panting in eagerness. She didn't have to wait long, the food ship taking the bowl and filling it up with soup, the bowl joined by a plate - more a platter, really - of the stew-like substance and a generous helping of rice, and then a glass of ice water.

"Curry rice and miso soup to start," she said. "Dig in!"

Enterprise needed no encouragement, immediately devouring the curry and gulping down the soup, the seasoned savoriness complemented by the bland rice, and the mild miso soup taking off the edge. Next up was one of the fish, delightfully fatty, salty, and crunchy, and then grilled beef and chicken, skewered on wooden sticks and bearing their own flavors, complemented by charcoal and a hint of seasoning. The carrier's every moment was a parade of barely-remembered flavors assaulting her tongue non-stop, and she was dimly aware of something brushing at her lips every so often.

Still, even the carrier's vast appetite began to be sated, and she slowed down - just in time to see the first of the ice cream placed in front of her.

It was vanilla, dusted with just a bit of shaped chocolate and topped with a candied cherry. Enterprise grabbed the spoon and took a scoop; after the recent attack on her taste buds, she was expecting something merely good.

Instead, as cold, creamy sweetness spread over her tongue, Enterprise found herself transported to a field of snow, a trio of furry aurochs pressed up against her and chocolate falling from the sky.

A blink, and then she was back, the ice cream gone entirely.

"How was the meal?" Mamiya asked, beaming.

"I… that was… but you… how… buh?" Enterprise said intelligently.

"That good, huh? Good, good," the food ship nodded, retrieving her utensils and the tray and stowing them. "I'll be by again for dinner. In the meantime, Naka put on a marathon on your TV, so enjoy!"

"A what on the what?" Enterprise wondered as her wits finally came back to her. Mamiya held up… something, pressing what was probably a button, and then something lit up in the corner of the room. The carrier's eyes widened as she beheld what looked like a small _movie screen_ , showing some sort of animated feature involving a man in a blue and orange martial arts outfit with the most improbably spiky black hair she'd ever seen.

"Dragon Ball, eh?" Mamiya sighed. "Well, I suppose that's as good a choice as any. Enjoy, dear!"

Enterprise nodded as she left, and then settled back to watch the… show, was it? Might as well see what it was like.

~o~

That set the pattern for the next few days: sit in the tub, eat large, absolutely delicious meals, and watch more episodes of Dragon Ball, which she was increasingly considering one of the best things she'd ever seen. Aches she'd never known she'd had were disappearing, her supply fairies were actually satisfied for once, and a steady of stream of Japanese auxiliaries and personnel had dropped by to say hi and remind her that, somewhere along the line, she'd gotten famous. Like, really famous, signing autographs famous. It was a little awkward, considering she didn't think that she really deserved it, but hey, she'd been the last ship standing, so she could at least understand _why_.

This day, though, that hadn't happened yet, and so she was settled in to watching Gohan, Krillin, and Bulma traverse the Planet Namek, which in her opinion was not a very interesting planet, but it was clearly going to be blown up a lot in the future, so eh. The sound of giggling children drifted past her door, a sound she had become familiar with and thus ignored.

She did not ignore the door creaking open, nor the whispered voices that wafted in.

"This is dumb," came a grumpy, somewhat deep - for a young girl, at least - voice. "Remind me why we're doing this again, Kagero? Because if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not get in trouble with the shitty Admiral."

"It's fine, it's fine!" came another voice, high-pitched and so sugary she could taste it. "I mean, why would the Admiral ban us from entering here and then not post guards if he didn't want us to come in here? Obviously, he wants to see who can show initiative!"

"That was a rhetorical question, dammit!" the first girl retorted. "Also, that doesn't make any sense!"

"If we're going in… we should… go in…" said a third girl, her voice flat and toneless.

The trio of voices piled in, revealing themselves as destroyers, two in sailor uniforms with the same design and blue hair, one short and dark and the other long, ponytailed, and lighter. The third wore a different sailor uniform, tight black shorts, and had brown hair in two pigtails. The short-haired girl was just as emotionless as her voice, the ponytailed one looked grumpy and like she had been that way for a long time, and the last obliviously cheerful, but with a hint of madness in her eyes.

All of this was processed and discarded by Enterprise as other mental lines asserted themselves. Lookouts identified the three as two Asashio-class and one Kagero-class, with 6 5" guns and eight torpedoes. They were already well within gun and torpedo range, and more importantly, they were the exact kind of ship that had _sunk Northampton, and crippled New Orleans, Minneapolis, and Pensacola._ _ **They were the enemy, and they needed to-**_

Enterprise flinched, gritting her teeth, a hand flashing to her eyes. She was dimly aware of her helm flickering in and out on her head, and that the destroyers were looking suddenly nervous.

"... Out…"

"W-What?" the ponytailed destroyer stammered, taking a hesitant step back.

The hand went down, eyes with red irises surrounded by black pinning them in place. "Get… out!" she shouted, indicating the door. "Out, you little brats, before I do something we're all going to regret!"

The destroyers hustled out, and Enterprise felt the black rage and hate drain away, letting her slump against the porcelain of the tub.

"Fuck, and it was going so well, too," she muttered.

~o~

Arare, Kagero, and Kasumi squirmed as they sat seiza on the floor of Admiral Goto's office. The Admiral's piercing gaze was bad enough; Abukuma's badly concealed worry was worse; but worst of all was Shiranui's resigned frustration, as if she simply expected this from them. That _hurt_.

The door opened, admitting the light cruiser Kinu. "Yes, Admiral? What is it?"

"Kagero, would you mind repeating your reasoning for entering the long-term repair docks against orders?" Admiral Goto said instead of answering Kinu.

"Uh, that you banned it but didn't post guards so you could see who would notice the obvious loophole, thus telling you who shows initiative?" the destroyer repeated.

"That still doesn't make any sense," Kasumi muttered.

"Admiral, why was I called in if we're just going to go over Kagero's leaps in logic again?" Kinu asked.

"Hey, you're the one who suggested that!" Kagero snapped. "So don't go calling this _my_ leap in logic!"

Silence fell on the room, Shiranui and Abukuma staring at Kinu in stunned amazement, while Kasumi-

"You shitty light cruiser!" she roared, surging to her feet. "I oughtta-!"

"You will be doing _nothing_ of the sort, Kasumi!" Admiral Goto barked. "Stand down!"

"But-!"

"That's an order, Kasumi." He turned his gaze to Kinu, who froze mid-step through the door. "And as for you, Kinu, I'm guessing this was one of your pranks again?"

"Aheh… yes?" the light cruiser hedged.

"In that case…"

Kinu suddenly found her way out blocked by a set of hard abs attached to the battleship Nagato.

"Nagato, please take her to her room and make sure she stays there," he said. "I have a few more matters to handle before we get to punishments."

"Of course, Admiral," Nagato said, picking up a silent Kinu like some sort of stuffed animal and walking off.

"Well, now that that's over with," Goto said, turning to the last destroyer in the room. "Shiranui, I believe you had something to say?"

"No," she replied, shaking her head. "Shiranui has changed her mind."

Goto continued to look her way for a few more seconds, before turning back to Desdiv 18. "Alright, Abukuma, why don't you get your destroyers back to their room? I believe we're done here. Ah, and Abukuma, while you go," the admiral added as she ushered her charges out. "Could you tell Ooyodo to come in here?"

"Ah! Y-Yes, Admiral."

The bespectacled light cruiser poked her head in a short time later. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"I did," the admiral confirmed. "You heard what Desdiv 18 did?"

"I did. And I think I know where you're going with this, Admiral," she replied. "I checked in with Akashi this morning, and it will be at least a week before she's sufficiently seaworthy to transport to San Diego." The secretary ship grimaced, adjusting her glasses. "I think we're actually going to have to go with the plan for guards. Kagero might have been the most eager, but there are others who will want to see the famed Enterprise for themselves. The problem is who we can spare for the job."

"Tatsuta has minimal combat duties, and Katori has been looking for a break from teaching," Goto immediately rattled off. "And even better, they're both quite intimidating in their own way."

"I'll send out the orders immediately," Ooyodo said, smiling.

~o~

Zuikaku glared at Tatsuta. "Look, I don't want to go in," she almost snarled, the angelic smile on the light cruiser's face not shifting an inch. "I'm not stupid. I just want to talk to her through the door."

"And as I've told you before, we're under strict orders not to let anyone who's a combat ship in," Tatsuta said primly, her eyes closed.

Hands flashed out, grabbing the light cruiser by her collar, and Zuikaku dragged her right up to her snarling face. "I. Get. That," the carrier properly snarled in that tone of voice usually saved for customer service lines and the DMV. "And I keep telling you, I don't want to go in! I just want to talk to her through the _fucking_ door!"

Tatsuta's eyes cracked open a notch, and Zuikaku had a sinking feeling that she'd just fucked up. A hand drifted up to clasp her wrist-

"Ahem."

Both shipgirls turned to Katori as she lowered her fist from her mouth. "In the interest of clearing this up before someone dies," she said, prompting Tatsuta and Zuikaku to break apart. "I suggest we ask the one who knows best about Enterprise's condition." With that, she rapped her knuckles against the door to the dock. "What do you think, Enterprise?"

"Yeah, sure, it's a sight thing, mostly!" the carrier called back.

"There we go. Problem solved!" Katori chirped.

Zuikaku flashed Katori a grateful smile, even as Tatsuta stepped back, grumbling under her breath, and the carrier chose to ignore the hint of disappointment in her tone. She sat down, facing the door, and began to speak.

~o~

"I'll understand if you hate me."

For a long moment, Enterprise found herself at a loss for words. Why would she hate this shipgirl she'd never even- oh, right, Zuikaku.

"I'll be honest, I kinda forgot about you during my big refit," she sheepishly admitted. "I was just a bit of a pit of self-loathing at that point."

"Heh, I don't know whether to be annoyed or relieved at that."

At the mention of relief, Enterprise shifted uncomfortably in her tub again. Seriously, everyone here treated her like this unstoppable uber-badass. Those were a lot of expectations to live up to!

"Yeah, can we not talk about that?" she said. "I've been hearing how badass I am for the last three days, and it's starting to stress me out." Casting her mind for a topic, she snapped her fingers as one came to her. "Oh! How's the rest of the Navy doing? Most of the people I've talked to have been support personnel who get their knowledge from newspapers, and I'd like a first-hand account."

"The American shipgirls, huh?" she heard Zuikaku muse. "Well, I've mostly met them on the Alaskan route, so I can only tell you about the Third Fleet, but… I suppose I should start with Oriskany."

And so she did, and she didn't stop at just a veteran carrier who hadn't even been finished before Enterprise had gone to reserve. There was Salem, who was practically a witch with her 8" guns. There was the dynamic duo of Kitkun Bay and White Plains, the baddest escort carriers in the Pacific, who had fended off and sunk an entire heavy cruiser group on their lonesome. A hundred destroyers, each distinct in their quirks, skills, and personalities.

And, of course, there were the battleships. Though she still couldn't shake the image of them burning in the waters of Pearl Harbor, it felt good to know that they were still fighting, and doing a damn good job of it. Arizona, still the gentle soul Enterprise remembered from those better days pre-war, and apparently rather uncomfortable with her martyr status. California, still every stereotype about her namesake state rolled into one, just updated for the new century. West Virginia, still the best shooter on the high seas.

The carrier made a note to talk to Arizona as soon as possible.

"-And Maryland took one look at her and started chasing her, screaming something about making her 'decent'," Zuikaku continued on a story she'd apparently heard from one of the destroyers, her smile audible in her words.

"Wait, how skimpy are we talking here?" Enterprise interrupted.

"Sleeveless, midriff-baring top, microskirt, and visible thong," came the answer.

For a moment, the carrier had no answer to that. "What's a- You know what? Never mind, I've got a good idea. Continue."

"Right. Well, a twenty-one knot battleship trying to catch a thirty-nine knot destroyer is-" Zuikaku cut herself off, followed by the sound of cloth shuffling. "Ah, damn, I have an appointment to get to. I'll be back tomorrow, okay?"

Enterprise nodded, then flushed slightly as she realized what she was doing. "Right, yes, tomorrow. Looking forward to it." She took a deep breath to compose herself before continuing. "It was nice talking to you, Zuikaku. And… for the record, I don't hate you."

Another long moment, and then she heard Zuikaku walk away. She also heard a "Thank you", so soft she was almost sure she'd imagined it.

~o~

A week passed by in this manner, but Enterprise eventually found herself being looked over by Akashi's fairies once more.

"Alright," the repair ship said as she retrieved the diminutive, orange-clade figures. "I'm pleased to announce a clean bill of health for you, Enterprise."

"Yes!" she whooped as she stood out of the water. "Finally, I get to actually _move!_ " At that moment, her nakedness registered and she hastily moved an arm over her breasts. "You, uh, wouldn't happen to have my clothes, would you?"

"I can do you one better," Akashi replied, pulling a towel out from… somewhere, followed by a stack of clothes. "We had the uniform remade, and we also found you some proper underwear. Go ahead, try it on."

Soon, Enterprise was back in her old outfit, grinning widely.

"Ah, so much better," she sighed contentedly. "So, now what?"

"Now?" Akashi grinned. "Now we retrieve your flight deck and get you on a plane to San Diego."

"And don't forget my hat," Enterprise added, drawing a grimace from Akashi.

"I was hoping you'd forgotten about that," she muttered.


	3. Chapter 3

Enterprise sat on a crate in the back of a C-17, packed in with a load of other cargo, mostly shipgirl-specific parts and equipment manufactured in Japan. Awe still ran through her at the size and power of the airplane, awe that had been present ever since she'd first seen it on the tarmac in Yokosuka. It made the old B-17, once the pinnacle of bomber technology, look like a child's toy.

And so quiet, too! Well, not super quiet, jet engines were still loud, but it was a different kind of loud than the constant drone of propellers. Much easier for the mind to pass off as white noise.

The sound of the door to the cockpit sliding open caught her attention, and she leaned around another crate to see the copilot standing in the doorway, grinning like a child on Christmas.

"We're just about to do the refueling. You wanna take a look?"

Enterprise matched the grin tooth for tooth as she stood and navigated her way through the cargo bay. "Oh, hell yes I want a look!"

The cockpit was both familiar and unfamiliar. The basic layout had apparently not changed in the seventy-odd years she'd been inactive, but the instruments were bewildering, even though the pilots swore up and down they reduced their workload. In any case, she wasn't interested in the cockpit. Instead, she gazed out of the front window as a twin-engine KC-46 dropped down above them, fuel line connecting to the refueling probe in an astounding and utterly routine feat of precision flying.

"Amazing…" she breathed.

The fueling continued for some time before a warning flashed up on one of the instrument screens, the pilot quickly dismissing it and the copilot's grin, if anything, intensifying.

"Oh, now you're in for a treat. It seems we've got some Abyssal interceptors trying to get at us," he said, hands indicating the windscreen. "Watch and be amazed."

And indeed, as the KC-46 broke away, refueling complete, a quartet of distant shapes barely discernable as fighters soared down and out of sight to get at the Abyssal planes. A few minutes later, the planes came back into view and waggled their wings at the distant-for-them cargo jet.

"You'd think they'd learn," the copilot muttered.

"Eh, unlimited reserves and all that," the pilot replied. "So, E, you like the show?"

"Yup! Very impressive," the carrier replied. "So, how much longer 'til San Diego?"

"Five, maybe six hours," the pilot answered. "Sorry we can't get you there any faster."

"No, no, it's fine," she assured them, though she did not say why it was fine. This was five or six hours to prepare herself for seeing her sisters again, and five or six hours to wonder what they were like, if humanity had changed them. Zuikaku, mostly exposed to the Bremerton-based Third Fleet, didn't know.

And that left her doubts gnawing at her.

"It's perfectly fine."

~o~

Deep breaths. In, out. In, out. The rear cargo door lowering was _not_ a harbinger of doom, there was nothing dangerous behind it. She hoped. Now if only those damn butterflies in her stomach would fucking _listen_!

The door clunked down fully, and Enterprise stepped out onto the runway on slightly shaky legs, her flight deck strapped to her back. Around her was the usual hustle and bustle of an operational Naval Air Station, but her gaze was focused on two figures standing in front of a black car. One was a stately man with just a dusting of white at his temples, in his late forties or early fifties and in very good shape, wearing a dress uniform decorated with quite a few badges and medals and pair of spectacles. And beside him was-

Enterprise's breath caught in her throat as she caught sight of the long blond hair, bright blue eyes, and warm smile of her sister, Hornet. And then it passed as her brain registered other details: a steely confidence in her that her younger sister had regrettably never possessed, a notable few inches in height and extra cup size in the chest, a blue uniform with a long-sleeved jacket and ruffled skirt, and more importantly, the form of an Essex-class hull superimposed over the girl.

Of course, that brought a twinge of guilt at the way she'd treated the girl during the war, but that was quashed with the ease of long practice.

"Welcome back, Enterprise," the man announced as he stepped up to her, hand outstretched. "Admiral James L. Holloway IV, commander of the Seventh Fleet's shipgirl force."

"A-Admiral, sir!" Enterprise stammered as she grasped the man's hand. "Uh, should I be saluting or something?"

"Don't worry about it," Admiral Holloway said, his smile warm and wide. "Discipline is fairly lax for shipgirls compared to most sailors."

"Well, when we're off-duty, at least," the shipgirl beside him said as she stepped up. "USS Hornet, CV-12, fourth of the Essex class, but it seems you knew that already. Welcome back, E."

"I- thank you. It's… It's good to be back." Enterprise opened her mouth to continue, to say what needed to be said, but the words fought her. "Hornet… I-"

"Save it," the carrier interrupted, though not unkindly. "If this is what I think it's about, you have nothing to apologize for. You were grieving and angry and I was a stupid, overeager kid who looked like your dead sister. Of course you reacted badly."

This time, the carrier's smile was genuine. "Thank you." She glanced around the runway again where, despite the hustle and bustle (or perhaps because of it) no one had taken notice of them. "Not that I'm complaining, but I expected a bigger reception than this."

To her surprise, both Hornet and Admiral Holloway grimaced at that.

"We… might have been keeping your return quiet," Hornet admitted. "San Diego's a zoo at the best of times, being the largest shipgirl fleet on the planet and all, and, well, if we didn't do that we'd be drowning in shipgirls right now."

"And on that note, we should probably get back to base," Admiral Holloway said as he looked at his watch. "I just hope nothing's exploded in our absence…"

"God knows it wouldn't be the first time…" Hornet muttered.

That sounded like a story, a good one, but neither the Admiral nor Hornet elaborated on it, instead heading for the staff car. Enterprise quickly followed the two, the carrier marvelling at the size and comfort of the interior, and then gushing at the smooth ride. And that turned into gushing about the city itself as they passed through Coronado, heading for the bridge that would take them into San Diego proper.

"Amazing…" Enterprise breathed, taking in the skyscraper-studded skyline of downtown. "It's like New York, but it's San Diego!"

"You didn't see this when you were in Japan?" Holloway queried, surprised.

"I woke up in the base, and the minute I could walk they shuffled me onto the first Globemaster they could find," Enterprise replied. "Damn, how many people live here?"

"Over 1.5 million, at least in the city itself," Hornet replied. "Over five million if you add Tijuana and all the suburbs."

"Amazing…"

Enterprise was silent as they passed over San Diego Bay, her gaze zeroed in on the ships: destroyers, LCS, and amphibs parked along the San Diego waterfront, as well as a supercarrier docked against North Island that she'd overlooked. But as they came closer to Naval Base San Diego, her expression of awe and glee fell into one of increasingly anxious nervousness.

By the time the driver parked the car within the base itself, the carrier was hunched over in her seat, quivering. Hornet and Admiral Holloway exchanged glances, and then the latter sighed and opened the door.

"Do I need to order you out, Enterprise?" he said in concern.

"N-No, I-I've got this," she said. Taking a deep breath, she stood, stepped out of the car-

And was immediately knocked against it by a pair of white and gold blurs.

"Y-You're here! You're really here!"

"I thought I'd lost you forever, Little E…"

Enterprise froze, staring down at the two blonde figures wrapping their arms around her. There was Yorktown, her blonde hair up in a ponytail and her tears silent; and there was Hornet, short-haired and sobbing with all her might. She didn't know what she was supposed to do: respond? Headpats? Run screaming for the hills she could see in the distance?

"- and I'm so sorry that I-"

That knocked the carrier out of her paralysis, and she shot an incredulous look at Hornet. "Sorry?! For what?!" she demanded, before wincing as her sister flinched. "I'm sorry, that came out a million times angrier than I meant, but… what are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry… for being no good," her younger sister muttered.

From the flinch she felt from Yorktown, Enterprise had a feeling this was a… common point of discussion. "Hornet, you…"

"No, Hornet," Yorktown interrupted, pulling away from the embrace and wiping her eyes. "I'm the one who should be sorry. Sorry for leaving you all, for not being the big sister I should have been."

"Wha- I'm the one who should be apologizing here!" Enterprise shouted. "I-I let you both get sunk! I…"

"Why don't you just admit you're all being a bunch of silly gooses and be sisters already?"

Enterprise turned her gaze from her sisters to a tall, greyish-blonde figure, standing with her hand cocked on her hip and a confident grin on her face. She wore a white dress, the skirt pleated at the sides and coming down to mid-thigh over black pantyhose.

"Lexie…" she breathed, before letting out a squeak as the carrier dashed forward and grabbed her and her sisters. "Ack!"

"Group hug!"

The Yorktown sisters found themselves wrapped up in the embrace of the bigger, stronger carrier as she nuzzled against Enterprise's red hair.

"Lookit you!" she purred. "I love the red hair! And you've gotten so big, too!"

Someone let out a piteous whine, though who was unclear, and Enterprise gritted her teeth as her hull girders creaked under the hug.

"Sis, I think you should let them go. They're looking a little blue."

Lexington pouted, but let them go and dropping them on their asses, and Enterprise flashed a grateful glance to to the newcomer as her sisters caught their breath. She was a long-haired blonde, dressed in a white sailor top much like her sister, though her skirt was separate and blue. A blue butterfly pin completed the picture. Where Lexington's expression was manic and mischievous, hers was kind and open, though with a hint of hard steel glinting through.

"Welcome back, Enterprise," Saratoga nodded.

The carrier looked away from Sara's prim smile, to Lexington's cocky grin, to Yorktown, still with tear streaks on her cheeks, and then to Hornet, wiping away her tears. And as she did so - as she realized that every single one of them still loved her - something broke within her. Tears started to stream from her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away, a sunny smile gracing her face.

"T-Thank you, everyone!" she announced. "I'm home…"

~o~

Enterprise staggered after her sisters down another anonymous corridor of the naval base, utterly exhausted. To her dismay and annoyance, her sisters remained fresh.

"Every one of them…" she groaned. "How did we run into every. Single. Shipgirl on the base."

"I don't think we got all of them, actually," Yorktown pointed out. "There was a distinct lack of destroyers in those crowds."

That drew another, longer groan from the middle Yorktown.

"Well, don't worry, we're reaching our last stop," Yorktown said as they came to a halt in front of another door, which Hornet, grinning, stepped up to and opened.

"And here's our room!" she announced with a flourish. "Just tell me how you want your bedroom decorated, and I'll take care of it!"

The room was a large triple suite, three bedroom doors visible on the other side of the lounge/kitchenette combo that made up the front room. Enterprise stepped in and walked up to the door that bore her name, and opened it to see it furnished but undecorated in tasteful periwinkle.

"We kept it open for when you were summoned," Yorktown answered the unspoken question. "Admiral Holloway tried to get us in a double in the interest of consolidation, but then the Colorado sisters were posted up to Bremerton, and a couple months after that you showed up near Guam."

Once again, Enterprise felt her heart do a flip at the faith of her sisters. "I might be wearing it out a bit, but… thank you. Again." And with that, she closed the door and walked over to the nearest couch and flopped face down onto it. "And now, I think I need to do something brainless until dinner."

"Well-" Yorktown began before something buzzed, cutting her off. "Hang on."

Enterprise pulled her head off the couch long enough to see Yorktown fiddling with… actually, she had no idea what it was.

"What is that?" she asked.

"That's a phone," Hornet answered, an amused smile on her face.

Her head stayed raised, as her jaw was now propping it up. "That is _not_ a phone."

"Actually, it is," Yorktown absently replied. "And on that note, Wisconsin wants to get yours set up."

"Wait, what?"

~o~

"Here you go," Wisconsin said, handing over a plastic and glass brick. "iPhone 8S, properly ruggedized for military purposes, and finally with that stupid headphone jack back." As Enterprise took the phone, a small packet joined it. "A basic primer on smartphones and how to make sure you don't break them. I'm going to assume you don't want a laptop just yet?"

Wisconsin had been a surprise. Built like all her other sisters (leggy, muscular, and busty), she was distinguished by her short, dark brown hair and glasses, and unlike Missouri, she wore her jacket loose and went for socks instead of pantyhose. She was also, as Hornet had informed her, a 'colossal nerd', in charge of tech support for San Diego's shipgirl population and "DM for several tabletop groups", whatever that meant. As such, the workshop Enterprise found herself in had about a half-dozen computers in various states of repair. At least, she assumed they were computers. Computers did not look like that when she was retired.

Shaking her head, Enterprise re-focused on the now. Figuring out the device in her hand seemed a higher priority than gaping at all the unfamiliar technology around her.

"Alright, why don't you try turning it on, then," Wisconsin said, smiling.

Nodding, Enterprise pressed down on the screen, prompting a request for a passcode. That was at least familiar, and she quickly jabbed one in, which sent up the home screen.

"Ah, good, you figured it out," Wisconsin sighed in relief. "You would not believe how many new summons weren't able to figure out a basic touch screen without me holding their hand. Anyway, best for you to figure out the functions on your own, and if you have any questions, your sisters should know how to do basic stuff."

"Right…" the carrier muttered, slipping the phone into a skirt pocket.

At that moment, the door swung open, admitting New Jersey. Now, New Jersey was just as Enterprise had remembered her: foul-mouthed, belligerent, convinced of the awesomeness of battleships, and seemingly wearing either an annoyed scowl or arrogant smirk 24/7. The gaggle of destroyers following after her like so many ducklings had been a surprise, though they weren't there at the moment. Looks-wise, aside from being a bit behind in the chest department and lacking the literal stars in her eyes, New Jersey was practically Iowa's twin.

"Yo, Wisky!" she announced, lifting up her aviator sunglasses. "Oh, hey Enterprise. Anyway, White's doing a cookout tonight. You guys in?"

"Of course I'm in!" Wisconsin announced. "White Plains' burgers are always worth taking some time off for."

At the word 'burgers', Enterprise felt her saliva glands go into overdrive. "Oh, hell yes," she said, wiping a bit of drool away. "No offense to the Japanese, their food's pretty good, but I could eat an entire cow right now."

"Good," New Jersey replied, matching the other two grin for grin. "Because I already told your sisters you'd be there, and if you weren't, that'd be embarrassing as hell." And with that, she turned around and walked away. "See ya!"

Enterprise waved the battleship goodbye, and then turned to Wisconsin. "So… how good are these burgers?"

"Ah ah ah, no spoilers," the battleship tutted. "It's something you really need to experience for yourself."

~o~

Enterprise stepped back from an ongoing conversation between Wisconsin and South Dakota on the merits of a particular model of computer, a conversation that had gone completely over her head in two seconds flat, and took in the various shipgirls gathered out on the concrete plaza. Besides the Yorktown and Iowa sisters and South Dakota, they had been joined by destroyer William D. Porter, the destroyers and destroyer escorts of Taffy 3, who had immediately clumped up around New Jersey, and the heavy cruiser Northampton.

That last had led to a very cathartic (in a good way!) talk, clearing the air between the two, but now Enterprise found herself wishing for the burgers to finish up so she could get out of the party. Everyone present knew each other; listening to the talk made her feel like she was intruding on someone's inside joke. And… quite frankly, she just felt uncomfortable around so many people.

And that was why she was standing alone at the fringes of the party. Well, alone except for a destroyer that had just sidled up to her. A very familiar destroyer with a pigtail, freckles, and taped-up glasses.

"Taking a break?" she asked.

"Yeah. South Dakota and Wisconsin are, well…"

The destroyer looked the way of the two battleships, snippets of tech-talk floating on the wind.

"I get it," she said, before offering her hand. "William D. Porter, Fletcher-class."

"Enterprise," the carrier reciprocated. "So, what's your excuse?"

"Well, Iowa always gets nervous around me, so I try to stay away from her at these things," the Fletcher answered. "Courtesy, y'know?"

"Iowa's scared of you?" Enterprise parrotted, glancing at the bubbly battleship, who in her admittedly limited experience seemed to want to be friends with everyone she met. "Why would- Wait." The carrier's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Are you the destroyer who shelled that Admirals' garden up in the Aleutians?"

The destroyer gave a long-suffering sigh and took a swig of her drink. "Well, points for remembering the _less_ famous incident of my career," she muttered.

"Heh, sorry," Enterprise said, rubbing the back of her head.

"Don't worry about it," William D. Porter said dismissively. "It's only the new summons who mention it at all these days, and I can live with that. Anyway, I'm guessing you feel a bit… detached from everything?"

"Yeah…" Enterprise said sadly. "It's just… it's tiring, keeping up with them."

"Don't worry about it," the destroyer replied, taking another sip. "Not all of us can be social butterflies. Tell you what, I'll send you a list of some places on base where you can decompress a bit."

' _Did I just make a friend?'_ Enterprise thought. Out loud, she said, "I'd like that."

"Burgers up!" White Plains suddenly announced.

Enterprise immediately zipped up to the grill, almost bowling over New Jersey in the process. The escort carrier manning it grinned, and promptly handed over a plate with a burger, dripping with meat juices and melted white cheddar. Slowly, Enterprise lifted the burger up to her mouth, taking in the aroma of the meal, and slowly, carefully, took a bite.

Flavor exploded over her taste buds, the toasted bun soaking in the seasoned beef flavor and salty cheddar. The meat was incredibly juicy, flooding her tongue with liquid, and a layer of some sort of sauce added additional moisture. And the onion - a whole slice of onion, fresh as can be!

Suddenly, the carrier was aware of the fact that she'd slumped to her knees, and that everyone around her was sporting a knowing smile. Oh, and New Jersey was… passing William D. Porter money? What?

A young face painted with red stripes under her eyes popping up in her own drew her attention away. "Hi! I'm Johnston," she said. "White's burgers are really good, aren't they?"

Enterprise glanced down at the burger still in her hands. "I'd say 'really good' is an understatement," she replied, before taking another bite. Being prepared this time, she wasn't floored by the taste again, but it still drew a satiated groan from her.

"I know, right?" Johnston said, grinning. Then she glanced back, and her grin grew even wider. "Gotta go, bye!" she said as she zipped away.

"JOHNSTON!" another destroyer and a destroyer escort she quickly identified as Hoel and John C. Butler shouted as they ran after her.

Once again, Enterprise found herself stepping back and taking in the sights of the party. Iowa turning Northampton into a blushing mess with a few well-placed words, Hornet showing South Dakota something on her phone, Hoel and John C. Butler still chasing Johnston, at least until William D. Porter tripped the latter up, and Missouri watching everything like a hawk. Oh, and everyone enjoying White Plains' burgers.

Within her heart, Enterprise felt her resolve strengthen. _This_ was something worth fighting for.

~o~

The rest of the night passed by quickly. Enterprise had bowed out of the party early, joined by her sisters, and they'd spent the night watching a movie, Jurassic Park, which was _awesome_. She'd woken up the next morning feeling happier than she'd been in a while.

She wasn't happy anymore.

"What in the world did you do to yourself?!" USS Medusa, the repair ship posted to San Diego, demanded.

"I had torpedo damage to fix," she explained, carefully making sure to not _whine_. "And, well, there was only one source of metal around." She wilted under the glare from the repair ship that would have impressed her namesake. "Twice?"

"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it," Medusa snapped. "Emergency repairs, I get. But having Abyssal… everything in every nook and cranny of your body? The utter _hack job_ you did to your flight deck?"

"Hey, you try fighting Abyssal cruisers with just 5" guns and your bare fists!" Enterprise shouted back. "Not all of us can be White Plains!"

With a visible effort, Medusa reigned herself in. "I shouldn't be snapping at you, it's just…" She ran a hand through her hair. "Alright, I'll need to rebuild your flight deck and the rest of your rigging so you can operate aircraft again. And yes, I'll keep the edge," she assured the carrier at the plaintive look she shot her. "Goodness knows there are no shortage of shipgirls who make swords work. Anyway, while I'm doing that, I'll need you to choose your launch method so I can properly design your rigging."

"Launch method?" Enterprise parrotted.

~o~

"A launch method? Well, we've got quite a few. Why don't you try them out?" Lexington said, indicating a wall loaded down with bows, rifles, and muskets.

After her meeting with Medusa, Enterprise had been been sent on to one of the gun ranges on base, where she'd been met by Lexington, the Essex Lexington. The resemblance, much like with Hornet, was uncanny, though she wasn't as heavily built as the elder Lexington, and she was in charge of assisting carriers in training. And the first thing she'd done, after hearing that Enterprise hadn't launched a plane in two and a half years, had been to point her to the weapon wall to find her chosen method of launch.

Sadly, most of them were two-handed weapons: large longbows or compound bows, and muskets and rifles that were _not_ meant to be fired from the hip. None of them would allow her to wield it with her flight deck. She still tried a few of the compound bows, similar to the weapon she'd been summoned with, but they didn't feel right. Finally, though, she spotted something on the bottom of the wall.

"What's this?" she asked, picking it up and examining it. It was a crossbow, with a top-mounted box magazine, of all things.

"Oh, that's an automatic crossbow based on what Taiho uses," Lexington replied. "Do you want to give it a try?"

"Definitely," Enterprise grinned.

Three magazines full of arrows, loaded up each with surplus Wildcats, Dauntlesses, and Avengers, were passed to the carrier. The Dauntless magazine was loaded into the crossbow, and Enterprise stepped up to the firing line, aiming the crossbow left-handed. She pulled the trigger, and with a twang, the crossbow launched its bolt, which transformed into a plane mid-flight. A plane that promptly faceplanted in the dirt, but it launched.

A few more launches provided the same result, and once the magazine was expended Enterprise turned it over to examine it. "Hmm…" she hummed, nodding. "I like it."

"I'll let Medusa know," Lexington said. "In the meantime, let's see if we can't get your skills up to snuff."

"Bring it on!" Enterprise confidently declared.

~o~

"Me and my big mouth…" she groaned as she staggered into the suite she shared with her sisters.

"Rough day with Lexington, huh?" Yorktown remarked, looking up from her tablet.

"I have just enough muscle memory left to make the change in launch methods hard, and I have an entire new set of melee instincts to work through on top of that," Enterprise groaned, flopping onto the couch. "So I just spent the last four hours having Lexington _break_ that muscle memory, and we're not even close to done."

"Don't worry, you'll get it," Yorktown assured her with a pat on the leg. "Especially once Medusa finishes up your rigging so you can get your pilots up to par again. Now, turn around."

Enterprise sat up and did so. "So, what are you-" she began before her sister's hands alighted on her shoulders and started squeezing. "Oooooohhhhh that feels good…"

"You'll want to take a hot bath, too, but this'll help," Yorktown said as she continued massaging her sister's shoulders.

Enterprise continued to moan in pleasure as the massage loosened up tight muscles, and all her worries fell away. So what if she made for a terrible carrier at the moment? She'd get better, and she was with her sisters again. All was well with the world.

Of course, she wasn't the only one thinking the first, as the next day's breakfast proved.

~o~

"Yes! An authentic Enterprise signature!"

The carrier in question waved awkwardly as the sailor who'd asked for the autograph practically _skipped_ away. That was something she had a feeling she'd never get used to.

"Why are you here?"

Enterprise paused, a bit of scrambled egg dripping off her fork, and stared at the carrier who'd stepped in front of her. Philippine Sea, if she remembered her Essexes right. "What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb," the Essex snapped. "An SCB-level rebuild that could've gone to another, more modern carrier. The personal attention of Lexington. All for just another Yorktown that can't even work with the JMSDF without falling into a murderous berserker mode. You know what that makes you?"

"I'm warning you right now," Hornet growled from Enterprise's left. "If you finish that thou-"

"A useless. Waste. Of. Resources."

Hornet surged out of her seat, only for Enterprise to grab her arm and tug her down. The action, and the scraping of the bench and the rattle of cutlery that it produced, was the only sound in an utterly silent mess hall.

"Hornet," she said, injecting every bit of big-sister authority she had. Her sister sent a sullen glare her way, but sat down again. That done, Enterprise turned her gaze back to Philippine Sea.

"Perhaps you're right," she replied. "Perhaps I am a waste of resources. But it's not my call, or yours, and I assure you." She stood, glaring Philippine Sea square in her eyes. "I will make sure I'm worth it."

"Hmph," Philippine Sea sneered. "You'd have to be Jesus himself to justify that sort of resource expenditure, and unlike some of my more gullible sisters, I seriously doubt you have any sort of divinity."

Enterprise opened her mouth to launch another response - only to pause and grin. "Hi, Hornet!" she said, waving.

Eyes narrowed, Philippine Sea glanced at the other Yorktown, who was holding in giggles. "Wait, but Hornet is right…" The carrier trailed off as she realized what was going on, milliseconds before a vice-like hand clamped down on her shoulder. She slowly turned around to see the other Hornet standing behind her, an eager smile on her face.

"Hello, Philippine Sea," she said. "We need to talk."

After that display, the few shipgirls who shared such sentiments had the good sense to keep their mouths shut. Two weeks passed, Enterprise mixing training with Lexington and relaxation with her sisters, though there were three terror-filled days when Yorktown and Hornet had to deploy, even when they came back with only minor injuries. She also, once she figured out first email and then instant messaging, got back in contact with Zuikaku, who helped get her through those few days.

Finally, though, Medusa called her into one of the docks, put her under, and when she woke up…

"Fuck yes!" Enterprise crowed, posing with her new rigging. "I'm back with the radar master race!" Reaching around her right side, she grasped the handle of her flight deck, and quickly and easily detached it from where it was attached to a secondary hull that made up the majority of her rigging. "And I've still got my sword!"

"The power of a well-designed latch," Medusa explained. "South Dakota quite enjoyed the challenge. How's the bow?"

Having just put her flight deck back in place, Enterprise unstrapped her crossbow from where it was strapped to her back and swung it around. "Huh, it's lighter," she noted.

"If you're going to _insist_ on using it one-handed, best to make it as light as possible."

"You ready?" Lexington said as she poked her head in. "We need to get your airgroup up to speed!"

At the word 'airgroup', over a hundred fairy heads popped out of her secondary hull, before letting out one resounding, eager "HEEEEEEEYYYY!"

And so another month passed as Enterprise and her pilots continued to train. She progressed from the firing range to open water; her fairies progressed from static trainers to full-performance aircraft. She continued to learn, continued to _live_ , continued to build a network of friends, and yet, she felt dissatisfaction creep in. She wanted to be out there, fighting and protecting, and only the knowledge that she was preparing to do so kept her from going completely stir-crazy. And then, finally…

"I'm being deployed?!" she yelped.

"Lexington has assured me that your skills are sufficiently up to par," Admiral Holloway replied. "And this is a straightforward, easy sortie, or at least it should be. Just follow Hancock's instructions, and you'll be fine."

"Yes, sir," Enterprise eagerly nodded.

~o~

At 0600 the next morning, Enterprise walked into one of the many briefing rooms within the base. Inside, she saw the carrier Hancock, her distinctive white hair up in her usual braid and resplendent in vintage 18th century military dress

"Enterprise!" Hancock shouted, sweeping up to the surprised carrier, grasping her hand and slapping her back. "It's good to have you back! I'm looking forward to working together today."

"L-Likewise," Enterprise said, just a bit thrown by the other carrier's boisterous personality. "Who else will we be sortieing with?"

"Well, Quincy will be in charge of fighter direction and the other cruisers," Hancock replied, thankfully toning down the volume. "And Steinacker will be doing the same for the destroyers. But there is one more member of our screen who I think you'll find familiar. She should be here any minute now."

"I see," Enterprise said as a knock sounded out.

"Come in!" Hancock called out.

The door opened, and Enterprise's eyes widened as Northampton stepped in, flashing her a smile. "It seems I get to protect you once again, E."

Shaking off her shock, Enterprise matched the cruiser's smile. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

The other shipgirls of the small task group filed in over the next five minutes. Cruisers Mobile and Santa Fe arrived first, both unfamiliar to Enterprise. The former was a kindly, somewhat timid girl, the latter a serious, professional girl with just a hint of pride in her air. Well, at least, after she chewed Enterprise out for not recognizing her from her old screen. Steinecker arrived next, herding in a mixed group of seven Benson, Fletcher, and Sumner-class destroyers with the ease of long practice. And finally came Quincy: not the New Orleans Enterprise was more familiar with, but the Baltimore, and watching her demeanor, every bit as serious and professional as Santa Fe's, break down entirely into babbled cooing at the sight of the destroyers served to easily separate the two in her mind.

"Alright!" Hancock announced once everyone was seated, pulling up a presentation on her computer and, through the wonder of technology, onto a screen at the front of the room. "The Third Fleet smashed up a good-sized Abyssal force last week while the bastards were trying to make a run on the eastbound convoy. We've been tracking the remnants by satellite, submarine, and Global Hawk since, and while about half the survivors have drifted back towards Hawaii, we have a grab-bag of cruisers and destroyers continuing south. Command wants them dead before they threaten Mexico or South America, and figured a milk run by the carriers would be better than risking a golden bb."

"Force composition is two Ne-class and one Ri-class heavy cruisers, plus seven of the usual I-class destroyers. We'll do this by the book. CAP up; Quincy, you're in charge of coordinating that. Steinecker, take one of your destroyers with you and set up pickets, I don't want to be bushwhacked by any hidden carriers we missed. Enterprise, are you better at dive bombing or torpedo bombing?"

"Dive bombing," Enterprise replied. "My pilots have more experience at it."

"Alright, you'll be on torpedo duty, then," Hancock stated, drawing a flinch from Enterprise but nothing more. "I assume everyone's topped off their fuel tanks?" Nods all around. "Alright, then it's time to sortie!"

As the other shipgirls streamed out of the briefing room, Enterprise hung back, waiting for Hancock to finish packing up her computer.

"Are you sure I should be handling torpedo bombing?" she asked once the other carrier was done. "I'm not the best at it, and-"

"Enterprise," Hancock said, clapping a hand down on her shoulder. "It's a _training run_. You need to work on what you're not good at rather than what you're good at, and more importantly, it doesn't matter if you screw up. Unless you launch a torpedo at me. That's something we can't ignore. But for everything else, I've got a deckload of Avengers, too. So just relax and be yourself out there, okay? Okay."

With that, the Essex broke away and began walking off. "Hancock!" Enterprise called out, prompting her to pause and turn around to a sheepish smile. "Thanks."

"No problem!"

~o~

Looking through her pilots' eyes was _weird_. Even after a month, Enterprise hadn't gotten used to the odd sensation of being in two places at once.

Still, the sight from a spare Avenger of the small Abyssal force sinking beneath the waves was quite welcome, no matter its strangeness, especially since two of them were sinking due to her Avenger pilots. All that was left were two of the I-class destroyers fleeing as fast as they could, and they couldn't outrun the eighteen Dauntlesses she'd sent up as a second wave.

"Scratch those last two destroyers," she reported as bombs bracketed them and tore them to shreds, with just a hint of smugness.

"You hear that, everyone?" Hancock shouted to their screen, planes still buzzing in to land on her flight deck. "A full clean sweep, no damage!"

But even as their escorts cheered, Enterprise saw something: a mop of stringy black hair poking up out of the waves behind Hancock - and more importantly, a very large gun muzzle aiming at the carrier's unprotected back. It was a Ma-class submarine, a type that had come as a nasty surprise to both Enterprise and the world's navies with it's powerful 12" gun. Like most of its brethren, this one was too close to aim guns at and not really sinkable by machine guns. All this and more shot through Enterprise's mind as pure instinct, and she grabbed her flight deck by its handle, performed that precise but practiced motion to unlatch it, and brought it down edge-first on the submarine's head, splitting it open like a rotten melon with a disgusting crunch and squelch.

"What the-" Hancock swore as she turned around to see what had nearly happened to her. "Oh. I guess this was a trap." She flashed her savior a glinting grin and a thumbs-up. "Good catch, Enterprise!"

"Thanks," she grunted as she braced her foot on the submarine's bisected head and yanked her flight deck out. She placed it back on her secondary hull, preparing for her aircraft to return - and jerked back from the destroyer suddenly up in her face.

"Hi! I'm Aaron Ward!" the tin can chirped. "That was so awesome! Can you teach me how to do that? Can you can you can yo-"

A hand flashed out, grabbing Aaron Ward by the ear, and yanked back to reveal Steinacker.

"What have I said?" she barked.

"But-!"

"What have I said?!" Steinacker repeated, even louder.

"D-Don't bother the big ships on duty…" Aaron Ward muttered.

"Yes," Steinacker said, putting down the smaller destroyer. "You can ask her when we get back to base." The Gearing looked up at Enterprise, her face apologetic. "I'm terribly sorry about this, Enterprise."

"I-It's fine," the carrier stammered, prompting a nod from Steinacker, and the two tin cans turned and beg steaming back to the screen. Once they were sufficiently far away, Enterprise plopped down on her butt, fatigue suddenly filling her bones.

After a moment, she heard water part and glanced up a pair of long legs. "Ready to head back?" Hancock asked, grinning.

"Gladly," Enterprise groaned.


	4. Chapter 4

Enterprise took a deep breath of the cool, crisp air of Puget Sound. Visible on her port side was the skyline of Seattle, which much like San Diego had grown dramatically in her absence. On her starboard side was the guided missile destroyer USS Halsey, sent up to reinforce the conventional forces in Bremerton.

As they carefully nosed into the narrow strait leading to Bremerton, a Seattle-bound ferry steamed past them, the passengers lining the decks cheering, hollering, and waving the occasional stars and stripes. Enterprise put on her best winning smile, waved back, and had her fairies blow her horn.

It was merely a week and a half since her first sortie back under US Navy command. Shortly after getting back, and after a round of apparently rave reviews from Hancock, she had received orders to steam north to Bremerton to relieve Kearsarge, who was being rotated back to San Diego for a much-needed refit. There, she'd be under the command of Oriskany, completing the last of her training on the job. Though Lexington was an excellent trainer, from what she'd picked up in her month in San Diego Oriskany was the navy's go-to for battlefield training for its carrier shipgirls, and one of the few carrier shipgirls rated to operate jet aircraft.

It was a prospect that both excited and worried Enterprise. On the one hand, she was eager to get back into combat; in fact, she was really eager, something that she knew she'd have to keep a tight lid on. On the other… well, she'd be away from her sisters, and Hornet, and the Lexingtons, and Northampton, and everyone else she'd made friends with in San Diego. And on top of that, there was the possibility of contact with the Japanese during the handoffs. For all that she felt far more even-keeled these days, she knew the Grey Ghost was still there, still simmering with hate. All the anime in the world wouldn't change that.

She'd pointed all of this out to Admiral Holloway when she'd received her orders, but as it turned out she actually was the best carrier for the job: namely, due to the half-dozen occasions where the carriers' cruiser screen had barely fended off an Abyssal surface attack. And given she had proper melee options…

Enterprise shook herself out of her reverie. She'd gone in this circle multiple times over the trip here; time to put on a proper game face.

She and the Halsey rounded the last bend, revealing Bremerton, the city hiding much of the naval base to the south. It didn't hide the sight of USS Kitty Hawk, newly refitted, rounding the peninsula, nor the shipgirl on the water in front of them, one that looked very similar to the Northampton Enterprise was familiar with.

"USS Northampton, Baltimore class, right?" she said as she accelerated up to meet the stranger.

"Got it in one!" the heavy cruiser said, clasping her hand. "Good to have you up here, Enterprise. The battleships have been chomping at the bit to meet you ever since you were retrieved."

The carrier stiffened, glancing fearfully about. "Uh, and where are they right-" she said hesitantly.

"Nevada's off bothering the Eighth Fleet in Norfolk," Northampton interrupted, a knowing smile on her face. "The rest of the battleships are in base, probably planning something."

Enterprise let out a sigh of relief at that. As long as Nevada was away… "Well, lead the way, then," she said.

The two shipgirls didn't take long to reach the naval base, the Halsey behind them nosing into one of the berths and they themselves clambering up onto the docks.

"We'll let you get settled in this first night," Northampton explained as they walked up to the shipgirl dorms, set back at the rear of the dock area. "After that, though, you're Oriskany's property."

"That fits," Enterprise giggled. "I heard from Zuikaku that she's kind of a hardass."

"Oh, definitely, but she's a fiercely protective and loyal hardass that's also generally fair," Northampton concurred. "Just don't sass her or anything like that and you two should get along fine."

With that, the heavy cruiser opened the door to the dorms - and flinched back as a party popper went off in her face.

"Surprise!" the ten battleships of Bremerton chorused.

Naturally, it was only after that proclamation that Enterprise walked in. "Wow," she breathed, taking in the sight of the room.

A paper banner was hung across the ceiling, the words "Welcome to Bremerton!" somewhat messily scrawled on it in blue and red paint, and surrounding it were paper streamers in various colors. Ten familiar faces in party hats were staring in surprise at Northampton, who for her part looked distinctly unamused by the whole situation. And finally, on a table behind them was-

"I-Is that cake for me?" she whimpered, wiping drool from her cheek. It was a simple chocolate cake, but the frosting looked absolutely decadent and she had a feeling the cake inside was perfectly moist and still warm from the oven.

"Er, yes," a short-haired blond with sunglasses - USS California - answered.

"Mine!" Enterprise barked, grabbing a convenient knife and carving out a large slice. A plastic fork joined its sharper brethren in her hand, as well as a paper plate, and she made quick work of the slice of cake, before slowly placing down the plate and utensils.

"So," she said, turning around. "I heard you girls missed me."

There was a brief moment of silence, and then all ten battleships surged towards her, talking and laughing and hugging and just generally causing chaos. Well, all nine. Pennsylvania hung back and, after a few minutes, put her fingers to her lips and blew.

*FWEEEEET!*

"Alright, now that I have your attention-"

"Attention, nothing! You nearly blew our eardrums out!" West Virginia groused, holding her hands over the afflicted organs.

"Nevertheless, thank you, Pennsylvania," Maryland said softly. "To lose control like that…" She shook her head. "Embarrassing."

"You said it," Mississippi intoned.

"Speak for yourselves," Idaho said, eyeing Maryland and her sister. "Seriously, all that repression can't be-"

"If I may finish," Pennsylvania thundered, shutting up her fellow battleships. "I believe we have a party and a cake to-"

The battleship's words died in her throat as she saw that half the cake was gone, and not in the neat manner of being cut with a knife. Around her she could feel her fellow battleships also staring. Enterprise paused in the middle of licking her fingers, glancing around the eyes staring at her. "What?"

Titters, giggles, and chuckles sounded out among the ten Standards. "Well, you've definitely got a carrier's appetite," Tennessee drawled.

The carrier's response to that was a thrown fork, and that was the cue for everyone to scramble to grab some cake before Enterprise ate it all. That was followed by catching up: on gossip, on the other shipgirls in the base, new hobbies, and, of course, combat. With Oklahoma and Nevada now more-or-less permanently stationed to Norfolk with the fall of Britain, the remaining Standards had organized into two five-ship divisions, and one of them had heavily distinguished themselves about six months back.

"Seven," Enterprise flatly repeated. "You guys destroyed seven Abyssal battleships in one engagement."

"I don't mean to brag-" West Virginia began.

"'Course you don't, y'do that every time you open yer mouth," Tennessee interrupted.

"Can I finish the goddamn story?" the other battleship snapped, drawing a shooing concession from Tennessee. "Thank you! But yes, seven, thanks to some damn good shooting, and not just by me, and those Abyssal bastards not expecting us to be able to reverse on a dime."

"Heheheh… the looks on their faces," Colorado chuckled. "I love my turboelectric drive."

"But yeah, there's a reason we've got the most kills of any battleship unit in this goddamn war," West Virginia finished.

Each battleship division rotated on and off convoy duty, as did the collection of DEs and escort carriers that made up the other half of the equation. Their primary cruiser group, meanwhile, operated on a one-on-one-off schedule to keep fresh. The problem was their lone carrier group, which had to go out with every. Single. Convoy. It was a grueling pace that had worn out most of their cruisers and was why Kearsarge was heading south again, but despite the situation and desperate pleading from Admiral Richardson, San Diego had refused to pry loose a carrier group, and in fairness they were getting hit by the bulk of Abyssal airpower in the Pacific.

Luckily, things moved onto lighter topics, from things to do in Seattle and Tacoma to the classic antics of the destroyers, in particular pirate wannabe Kidd, and got two seconds into a set of recommendations from Colorado and New Mexico on the best marijuana dispensaries in the area before Pennsylvania and Maryland put the kibosh on that discussion.

That was the opening Enterprise needed to slip away and walk up to Arizona, who had excused herself to the edge of the festivities to lean on the wall and sip punch.

"Hey, Ari," she said as she walked up. "Not enjoying the festivities?"

Arizona jerked, turning sheepish at the sight of Enterprise. "Oh, no, no, it's just…" The battleship trailed off before sighing. "It's tiring, you know?"

"I do, actually," Enterprise remarked, joining her against the wall. The two stood in companionable silence for a moment before the carrier spoke up. "So, how do you handle it?"

Arizona sent a confused glance her way. "Handle what?"

"The whole… fame thing," Enterprise said, gesticulating. "I'm mostly used to it, but I keep running into people who practically fall over themselves when they see me. I have a Baddass of the Week page, Ari. I just…" She grimaced, trying to find the words. "I get it, intellectually. I had three years of introspection to work with and, well, I was the last carrier standing. A reputation is inevitable. But this… veneration… it bothers me. I don't feel like I deserve it."

"Why me…" Arizona said wistfully. "No, I do understand what you mean. And… well, there's only two things you can do. Know as many people who don't venerate you like that, and smile and nod when you meet people who do." The battleship sent a grateful look towards her fellow battleships. "For all their other faults, my sister and the rest of the prewar battleships never bought into the whole martyr thing, and that helped immensely."

Nodding, Enterprise thought back to her sisters, the Lexingtons, Hornet and Lexteen. To them, she was their sister, a surrogate daughter, and a valued friend; not the legend that had sprung up in her wake.

"Also, while your war record helped build your mystique, Star Trek was probably a bigger factor," Arizona added. "So watch out for people in yellow shirts and pointy ears."

"Star what?" Enterprise parroted, mystified. "I know about Star Wars…"

"Well, now we have something to watch together on our downtime," the battleship cheerfully replied, clapping her shoulder.

The party slowly wound down after that, the gathered shipgirls drifting away in ones and twos. Enterprise left in the middle of the pack, finding her room with little trouble and plopping down in her bed without changing her clothes. It had been a long day, and she expected another long one tomorrow.

~o~

"So. You're Enterprise."

The carrier in question stood ramrod straight on the water as Oriskany circled around her, inspecting every inch. The carrier had proved just as severe as Enterprise had expected, in appearance as well as demeanor, her flame-orange hair drawn up in a tight bun and her face decidedly pointed and angular.

"You've got quite the reputation," Oriskany continued. "But that reputation carries no weight here. You are not Enterprise, hero of the Pacific. You are Enterprise, just another carrier under my command."

Oriskany paused, the silence stretching before Enterprise took a chance.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, ma'am," she replied.

Silence again, and then a smile spread over Oriskany's face. "Excellent," she said. "Keep that attitude up, and we're going to get along just fine."

Coming out of her last circle, she turned to face the three other carriers in their task group: Leyte and Iwo Jima rounded out the task group along with Enterprise and Oriskany, both of them shuffling in place and stealing glances at the redhead.

"Leyte, Iwo Jima!" Oriskany barked, drawing flinches out of the two Essexes. "Pay attention! Remember: constant vigilance!"

"Y-Yes ma'am!" they barked, stiffening.

Oriskany inspected the line, then nodded. "Adequate," she declared. "Alright, we're going to be practicing package strikes. Remember, Enterprise, my aircraft are faster than yours. Make sure your pilots know that."

Nodding, Enterprise unslung her crossbow, the other carriers doing the same with their own weapons. Aircraft were sent aloft, heading for a nimble, remote-controlled boat zig-zagging through the Sound - and Oriskany held back. It wasn't until several minutes after the propeller planes were aloft that Oriskany raised her rifle, and Enterprise watched, fascinated, as a mix of Crusaders and Corsairs soared into the air.

Sadly, she had little time to gawk before she had to start coordinating her bombers, and the sudden arrival of Oriskany's strike planes still caught her off guard, and threw her timing off. The boat went to the bottom, but Enterprise was uncomfortably aware that it was her side of the box of bombs that had been open.

"Not unexpected," was Oriskany's response when they all retrieved their aircraft. "It takes everyone off guard the first time they experience it. We'll work on it."

That didn't make Enterprise feel any better. Her worries about her sisters, about the Lexingtons, roared back to the fore, and the grip of her crossbow creaked in her grip. This performance was unacceptable. She would do better. She had to do better.

And indeed, she did do better over the next few strikes, her pilots reacting better to Oriskany's planes suddenly cutting off the boat's escape vector, which lifted her spirits somewhat. And they continued to climb as she and her fellow carriers continued to practice.

As well, she was aware of activity going on to the south at the port of Tacoma. The city had benefitted even more than Seattle from both the Abyssal war and the convoys to Japan it necessitated; as a prime port and rail terminus, it was seeing huge amounts of inbound rail traffic as vital goods were prepared for shipment to embattled Japan, and every day more ships gathered within Commencement Bay. Enterprise could feel it in her bones: soon, it would be time for her first convoy escort.

This was confirmed eight days after her arrival when she and the carriers were joined by eight cruisers and twenty destroyers on the Sound, followed shortly by a five-ship battle squadron with escorting cruisers and destroyers headed by Pennsylvania, a cruiser task force built around the Des Moines sisters, and a large close escort of primarily escort carriers and destroyer escorts. The latter swung south to meet the merchant ships, the heavier combatant ships simply waiting.

It was a wait made much more tolerable by the company. The half-dozen heavy cruisers that were part of their screen kept mostly to themselves, aside from the occasional conversation with Northampton, but the two light cruisers were much more eager.

"Hey, Enterprise, I'm Worcester!" the first eagerly announced, grabbing her hand and pumping.

"And I'm Roanoke!" the other said, grabbing her other hand.

"And we're your best friends!" the chorused in unison, grinning ear-to-ear.

Enterprise quirked an eyebrow at the display, then glanced over to Leyte. "They always like this?" she asked.

"Y-Yes…" the other carrier squeaked.

"Hey, we can be serious!" Roanoke protested.

"We just choose not to be," Worcester finished, sniffing haughtily.

"But speaking seriously for once, we are the best AA cruisers in the fleet," Roanoke boasted.

"Check it out," her sister added, grabbing two handles to push her rigging forward. "Twelve dual-purpose 6" guns-" The twin mounts turned and waggled their barrels to rather impressive elevations. "Twenty-four automatic 3" guns-" The Bofors-like mounts spun around with an electric whine.

"And all aimed by the best radar money can buy and spewing VT fused shells!" Roanoke announced, framing Worcester with her hands.

"Trust us, no planes are getting through on our watch," Worcester finished.

"Ooookay…" Enterprise drew out before grinning. "I think I like you girls."

"Yay!" they chorused, clasping hands in a sickeningly adorable display. "She likes us!"

"Worcester! Roanoke!" Oriskany barked. "Back in formation!"

"Fiii~iiine," the two AA cruisers sang, before steaming away from Enterprise, waving as they went. The carrier waved back, and then turned around to the sight of the ASW escorts leading a line of absolutely massive cargo ships. No more words were said; no more needed to be said. Salem let her line of cruisers and destroyers drift back into the close escort, Oriskany's and Pennslyvania's task groups falling in line on the east and west sides, respectively.

The mood remained relatively lighthearted until the convoy cleared the Straight of Juan de Fuca and swung north to hug the Alaskan coast. Floatplanes and dive bombers, as well as Oriskany's E-1s, were sent aloft, and the P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft flown out of McChord Air Force Base added their own reconnaissance capabilities to the growing net.

Still, for two days the only activity was the occasional snooping Abyssal plane and a quickly-sunk submarine. Hell, Enterprise actually felt sorry for that damn boat. After all, it had surfaced in between Kitkun Bay and England. The only question was whether the escort carrier's orbiting Avenger had done the job, or the DE's Hedgehog.

For a while, she had actually dared hope that the most exciting event on the run would be the handoff with the Japanese.

And then, towards the end of the third day of the journey, Oriskany's hand shot up to her ear.

"How many?" she asked, her voice tight. There was a long stretch of silence from the carrier, and then she nodded. "I understand. We'll be ready."

Enterprise was burning with curiosity, both for the information given and how she did… whatever it was she did, and luckily information on the first was quickly forthcoming.

"Our AWACS has detected a strike of long-range bombers inbound," Oriskany reported. "Pennsylvania has ordered additional fighter cover to supplement what the escort carriers are putting up. I want as many fighters in the air as possible without compromising an increased CAP." She turned her gaze to Enterprise. "I also want your Dauntlesses in the air and searching. The Abyssals never do things singly."

Behind her flight leader, Enterprise could see the cruisers launching their floatplanes, and she nodded, hefting her crossbow and retrieving a magazine loaded with Hellcats. Fighters first, then Dauntlesses.

Additional Hellcats were joined by Crusaders and Corsairs from her fellow carriers, the much faster planes quickly catching up to the escort carriers' Wildcats and were vectored in by the battleships. Enterprise kept only one eye on the developing furball as their fighters met the… things masquerading as bombers. Her instincts agreed with Oriskany; the bombers were a distraction. For what was the question.

Part of the equation was soon revealed as one of her dive bombers spotted a pack of figures the carrier had had drilled into her skull while at San Diego.

"Oriskany!" she barked. "Four Ru-class battleships, on a course to engage Pennslyvania's group!"

"Thank you, Enterprise, I'll let her know," Oriskany nodded, before her face tightened into a pinched frown. "Any sign of carriers?"

"No, but I'm still looking," Enterprise said, glancing up at the sun. "Sun's going to be going down soon, unfortunately."

"Ugh!" Iwo Jima suddenly spoke up. "I fucking hate night fighting!"

Oriskany's answering grimace was uncharacteristic. "While I would prefer something less… operatic, I agree with the sentiment," she said. "Which almost certainly means there are Abyssal carriers out there, trained in night fighting and waiting for the signal."

Her face set in a grim line, Enterprise turned her attention back to her dive bombers, hoping to find the enemy before dark. It was not to be, sadly; the only action anyone got was the retrieval of their fighters and a few potshots between the battleships, as the Abyssals seemed content to use their superior speed to try and kite the battle line.

As the last of her dive bombers trailed in, her eyes widened as the fairy in the back caught just the briefest of glimpses of something none of them had expected.

"Oriskany!" she shouted, frantically yanking a magazine full of Avengers out of her rigging. "There are destroyers inbound on the convoy! A lot of destroyers!"

"How close?" came the reply.

"Too close! Within fifteen miles!" Enterprise answered, the magazine slotting in. "We need to-!"

"I have already alerted Salem," Oriskany said, her voice deadly still. "Calm yourself, Enterprise. This is a surprise, but we are prepared for it. Leyte, prepare a strike to catch any stragglers."

"Y-Yes, ma'am."

Memories of Guadalcanal shot through Enterprise, of stories from Chicago of Vincennes, Quincy, and Astoria helplessly burning under Japanese guns; of New Orleans, covered in shrubbery and her bow lost, tearfully apologizing for Northampton; of San Francisco and Portland, limping away from a fight they had no business being in. Salem was one of three heavy cruisers in the force she led, and a pit formed in her stomach at the thought of them fighting at night against nimble destroyers.

"Oriskany-" she pleaded, only for the senior carrier to raise a hand.

"Enterprise, I know you never saw the Des Moines sisters, in action or otherwise, so your concern is admirable but unnecessary," she said. "Those three can handle themselves in a night fight, and they have Boise, Helena, and Honolulu backing them up. Have faith; they will win this."

With an effort of will, Enterprise forced down the memories. "Alright," she said.

A snort sounded out behind her, and she turned to Iwo Jima.

"Ten rounds per minute, Enterprise," she said, grinning. "Ten. Rounds. Per. Minute."

And with that, she went back to silence, leaving Enterprise thoroughly confused as to the sudden change in demeanor from the carrier, who had up until sailing been just as skittish and quiet as Leyte. And what did she mean by ten rounds per minute? They were talking about heavy cruisers, with slow-firing 8"-

Her eyes widened. No wonder everyone thought the Des Moines sisters could handle themselves against destroyers.

As if on cue, the rolling thunder of sustained, distant gunfire sounded, rather than the desultory cracks of the battleships' ongoing dance. It further distinguished itself by sounding like the ripping of a machine gun, one continuous stream of fire lighting up the horizon.

"Music to my ears…" Iwo Jima sighed.

"Contact!" came an unfamiliar voice from their screen. Closer inspection revealed it to be heavy cruiser USS Toledo. "Radar master race, bitches! I've got six Wo-class carriers on my Seahawk's radar screen!"

"How far are they?" Oriskany asked.

"Well, that's the weird part," the heavy cruiser replied. "They're over three hundred miles away and they're not getting any closer."

"This doesn't make any sense…" Oriskany muttered. "What are they…"

"Hey!" Northampton spoke up. "I can't raise Dutch Harbor! You don't think…"

Oriskany staggered as if she'd just been struck, and the pit in Enterprise's stomach widened into a gaping crater the size of Long Island.

"No…" the senior carrier breathed. "It can't be…"

The E-1 Tracer she had aloft suddenly screamed across the formation, heading North. Enterprise glanced around, taking in Iwo Jima's grim scowl, Leyte's quivering nervousness, and Oriskany swaying in place with wide eyes.

"I'm missing something…" she muttered. "Seriously, what's got you all spooked?"

"Have you heard of the Northern Ocean Princess?" Iwo Jima asked, her mouth a thin line.

She had, but-

For the second time in the last ten minutes, dawning comprehension broke over Enterprise's mind, and this time, it wasn't welcome in the slightest. "Tell me you're joking. Please tell me you're all joking."

"I really, really hope we're all wrong about this," Iwo Jima sighed. "But if I'm right, then we just answered whether the Abyssals can make new versions of defeated Installations."

Suddenly, Worcester and Roanoke sped by, their faces devoid of their earlier cheer. Just as they cleared the carriers, Enterprise's radar began screaming at her. There were inbound aerial contacts on the screen.

A lot of contacts.

"Here we go," she muttered, raising her flight deck.

And then the Worcester sisters exploded.

Well, it only looked like they exploded, all twelve of their 6" dual-purpose mounts firing as one. Distant explosions followed half a minute later, during which the cruisers had sent another another one hundred and twenty rounds downrange.

Exploding proximity fuses weren't the only thing the Abyssal strike force had to contend with. The carriers' combat air patrol had wisely followed the Tracer, and while the propeller planes were stopped cold by the escorting Abyssal, they had no answer for Oriskany's Crusaders booming and zooming at the speed of sound. Sadly, with only six of the jets available, they could only slow and disorient the strike.

The carriers were hardly idle themselves. Antiaircraft guns were primed, and more importantly all of them immediately began lofting more fighters. Here, Enterpise had the advantage, her light crossbow much easier to handle and faster to fire than the compound bows Iwo Jima and Leyte carried, and faster to reload than Oriskany's rifle.

And while the Worcesters had been first to react, the rest of their escorts were rapidly filling in a proper AA formation, 5" guns pointed skyward.

And yet it wasn't enough. 6" shells and Oriskany's fighters were breaking up the formations, scattering them, but the individual squadrons pressed on. And the attack didn't seem to stop. Her radar kept detecting more Abyssal planes coming from the distance. The addition of the task group's 5" guns helped, but not enough.

'They're going to break through,' she thought grimly.

A few adjustments in her course, and then she was on the side facing the incoming air attack. Her flight deck was raised up at just the right angle so that the guns lining it could aim at their attackers.

'Closer… closer…'

They were in range.

Automatic 3" guns roared to life, from the Worcester sisters, from Enterprise - and to her surprise, from Oriskany, too. The front wave of Abyssal strikers simply melted, thousands of proximity-fused rounds detonating in their formations. Yet still, they came on.

The latest round of fighters tore into the strikers, their escorts currently occupied. Chattering Bofors added their throw weight to the defense. Yet still, they came on.

When the destroyers' Oerlikons began chattering, and the heavy cruisers opened up with barrage fire from their main guns, Enterprise enacted the final defense: evasion. She zigged, she zagged, and tried to avoid colliding with shipgirls all doing the same thing around. At least three torpedoes sped past her, a bomb was batted away by her flight deck before exploding, and another smacked into her back and detonated. Aside from a torn shirt and battered rigging, she shrugged it off.

And then, suddenly, the Abyssal aircraft were gone. The remnants could be seen on radar speeding off into the night. Presumably back to Dutch Harbor and their new Northern Ocean Princess.

"Headcount!"

"Minor bomb damage. Still fit for combat!" Enterprise answered, spinning on her heel.

"Torpedo hit amidships, TDS held up!" Iwo Jima said next, a slight but noticeable hitch in her leg. "Still fit for combat!""

"A bomb and s-several rockets!" Leyte finished, a noticeable crater in her torso and her flight deck scorched in several spots. "G-Give me t-two hours and I'll be f-fit for combat!"

All three froze at once as they took in the sight of their flight leader. Where Iwo Jima had a noticeable hitch to her stride, one of Oriskany's legs was twisted ninety degrees the wrong way and the other was crooked. Black craters pockmarked her thighs, face, and abdomen, and her rigging was a burning ruin. All around her aircraft were sinking into the deep, her fairy pilots climbing up her leg.

"Two torpedoes, four bombs, and a dozen rockets," she summarized, sighing. "I am… unfit for further combat. I must join the merchant ships, for I am limited to fifteen knots and will need emergency repairs." Her gaze, still as focused and piercing as ever, landed on Enterprise. "Enterprise, you are in command."

"Wait, what?!" she yelped.

"Oh thank God," Iwo Jima breathed in a rush. "Better you than me, frankly."

"G-Good luck?" Leyte encouraged.

"You have the poise, the authority, and the instincts," Oriskany said. "You are the best for the task for those reasons." She paused, and threw a long-suffering glare at the other two carriers. "And for the fact that those two couldn't lead their way out of their own bedrooms."

"Yeah, fair," Iwo Jima shrugged.

"B-But, I-!" Enterprise began.

'Abandon your fear. Always look forward.'

She paused, taking a deep breath, and her incredulous panic melted away, replaced by cold, hard determination. "I'll do it," she said.

"Good," Oriskany nodded, turning away and steaming, slowly, for the convoy. Soon she was out of sight - and then a howl of pain echoed across the waters.

"Oh, Ori…" Iwo Jima sighed. "You don't have to be strong all the time, y'know."

Once again, Enterprise found herself staring askance at the Essex. Seriously, where the hell had this version been back in Bremerton?

She shook her head. Now was not the time to be wondering about that. She still had six carriers lurking in the darkness, and she had a sneaking suspicion that they weren't all they had to worry about.

"Toledo!" she called out. "Does your Seahawk still have the position of those Wo's?"

"Yes it does!" the heavy cruiser answered. "It's busy playing cat and mouse with some fighters, but those Wo's are still there, and they haven't launched a strike!"

'What are they doing?' Enterprise wondered, biting her thumbnail. 'An airstrike would've been their best opportunity to sink us all. And they're just hanging back like that?'

'I'm missing something.'

Her right hand drifted up to her ear, and pressed. And suddenly radio chatter burst to life, a hundred voices all at once. But two stood out, and they were the two she was looking for.

"Kitkun Bay! Pennsylvania!" she said.

"Oh, hey, E! Glad to hear you figured out the radio!" Kitkun Bay chirped.

Enterprise flushed red at the reminder. "Oh, shut up," she muttered. "Anyway, status?"

"Still trading potshots with those battleships," Pennsylvania replied. "Idaho's getting increasingly salty about that."

"Come out and fight, you yellow-bellied bastards!"

"We've had a few submarines poke their heads up, but nothing serious," the escort carrier reported. "Why? What's going on?"

"I'm not sure, but I-"

A feeling of kinship shot through Enterprise. She whirled around, gazing to the north again - just in time to see the far heavy cruiser in the formation, Macon, walk right into a salvo of heavy shells.

"AAAAH!"

"Macon!"

Cruisers and destroyers alike surged forward to rescue the stricken heavy cruiser from the pair of Ta-class battleships just barely visible in the gloom. Enterprise took in the scene in a split second, and then power flowed through her veins, dark and hot.

"Iwo Jima, Leyte!" she ordered. "Torpedo bombers aloft, now! Northampton, organize covering fire! Make them keep their heads down, or at least distracted!"

"Yes ma'am!" all three responded. Northampton then shot her an odd look. "And… what are you going to be doing, Enterprise?"

In lieu of answering, she crouched down on the water in a runner's stance, her propulsion sending sprays of water.

"I'm going to take them down," she answered.

And with those words, she released the force gathered in her feet and shot forward, faster than she had any right to from near a dead stop. Her left hand stowed her crossbow - it wasn't needed for this fight - and shot up to the other shoulder, grasping a handle and twisting to unlatch her flight deck.

The Abyssal battleships noticed her, of course, what with the massive rooster tail she was kicking up, and she could see a number of heavy cruisers with them. But that brought their attention off the stricken Macon, who was currently far more squishy than her. Their guns shifted, aimed in her direction, and fired, the shells screaming overhead. Literally overhead; she could feel the pressure of their detonation behind her.

Closer and closer she came. The heavy cruisers were following the plan, firing their 8" guns at the Abyssals and causing further distraction from the obviously batshit carrier sprinting at them. But she could also feel shipgirls sprinting up to join her. She risked a glance behind her, seeing Fall River heading for Macon, and more importantly, Worcester and Roanoke leading a destroyer charge.

That brought a smile to Enterprise's face. Now her plan was just dangerous instead of nigh-suicidal!

And so, the carrier continued her charge. The Abyssals were now starting to steam backwards, and Enterprise suspected she'd see panic on their faces if she was close enough. The rain of 8" shells was clearly starting to bite, at least on the heavy cruisers, judging from the sporadic flame light.

Still, it was seeming increasingly unlikely that she'd actually catch her opponents, especially with the Abyssal destroyer screen rushing up to meet her. A scowl spread across the carrier's brow; fighting destroyers was just the worst. Nimble and quite able to blow her leg off if she wasn't careful, she hadn't fought any since an eight-ship squadron had forced her to crawl onto a beach with a battleship clenched between her teeth. They were all sent to the bottom in the process, of course, but it was the principle of the matter!

Anyway, she had a plan for handling them. As soon as they were close enough, their light guns raising shell splashes, she ducked underwater.

Her smile returned, now rather more bloodthirsty as she heard shells scream overhead from the Worcester sisters. So much for the destroyers.

With the surface threat gone, she started steaming towards the Abyssal battleships again. How she did that while underwater was a mystery of the goddamn universe, one the carrier wasn't particularly interested in deciphering. It did its purpose, allowing her to advance unseen under the feet of the Abyssals.

From the lack of movement, it seemed they had regained some of their nerve, though the continued hail of shells meant they weren't out of the woods at all. They also seemed to have forgotten about her.

Too bad for them.

Enterprise surfaced, water sloughing off her. She took a step forward, bumping into one of the Ne-class heavy cruisers accompanying the Ta's. It turned around, expression angry and mouth open for a retort - and then froze as it saw her.

"Yo," Enterprise drawled, before her left hand lashed out into the Abyssal's throat. 120,000 horsepower, enhanced by mystical forces, drove the sharp claws on her hand through the armor there, raising a spray of ichor, and with a twist of her wrist she tore out the entire throat of the hapless heavy cruiser, letting it drop into the water with a wet gurgle.

The splash drew the attention of the remaining heavy cruisers and two battleships, but they had no time to react before Enterprise sprinted towards the nearest heavy cruiser, flight deck lashing out in a powerful sideswipe. Sheer mass, more than the sharpened edge, drove it through the Abyssal's body in a shower of black ichor, messily bisecting it. Another heavy cruiser tried to tackle her and was batted aside with the flight deck for her trouble, the spines along the edge drawing blood in four places.

Both battleships, their eyes wide in panic, fired every gun they had at the… thing attacking them. Somehow, even at ranges John Paul Jones would have deemed close, Enterprise flowed around the shells, arm winding up for another swing. Her target skipped back just in time, taking a long but shallow gash across its chest. Its companion went for a punch, a punch she caught with her left hand and squeezed.

"You want to go?" Enterprise rasped, standing straight and increasing her grip so that the Ta-class battleship dropped to its knees in pain. "Do you?"

[LET GO OF HER!]

Enterprise yanked her captive up, letting it catch the shells the other battleship had fired, her flight deck rising to catch the only one that got past. As her fellow Abyssal howled in pain, it almost looked sad.

"How about no," the carrier said, bringing her sword back and stabbing it through the battleship's back. When she let go, it simply sank into the depths.

With a howl of anguish, the last unengaged Abyssal - the rest were being torn apart by the American cruisers and destroyers - leapt at Enterprise, clearly intent in clawing her eyes out or something along those lines. Enterprise rushed forward to meet her, aware of the bloodthirsty grin on her face but unable to care. This was a fight, a good one, and she loved it!

The next minutes were, for Enterprise, spent in a red haze. Her claws, her deck, all met Abyssal flesh, ichor flying through the air, with the few counters that landed blunt and unable to do more than annoy her. With that clear distance in lethality, it was not surprising that the fight was soon over. Disappointing, certainly, but not surprising.

Grin still in place, Enterprise stood and looked off to her side - and beheld nearly a dozen pairs of wide, tear-filled eyes, attached to young bodies that trembled and unconsciously drifted towards the larger forms of Worcester and Roanoke.

In an instant, her battle-lust evaporated, and she truly saw the battlefield, and herself. Her arms and flight deck dripped with Abyssal ichor; chunks of them lay scattered throughout the waters. The destroyers were terrified of her. And the two cruisers?

She half expected them to shoot her.

And worse, she knew they'd be completely right to.

~o~

It was a listless, demoralized force that covered the north of the convoy as they passed the western Aleutians. Iwo Jima had tried to pry something out of Enterprise, but had been met with a proverbial brick wall of silence, the carrier looking utterly lost. Northampton had tried to do the same with the Worcester sisters, and had been rebuffed with a venomous "Ask Enterprise."

No one bothered to ask the destroyers. They were skittish enough as is.

Not for the first time, the Essex wished that Oriskany was here. She'd have pried what happened out in ten seconds flat! Or, if possible, for Leyte to grow a spine so they could tag-team either Enterprise or the Worcesters.

On the plus side, her carrier pilots had just given her another option.

"Hey, Enterprise!" she shouted. "The Japanese are almost here to take the convoy!"

That got a reaction, and actually a pretty amusing one. Her nominal commander jerked in place, then zig-zagged a couple of times, her head frantically every which way, and then settled for putting on a very shaky game face.

"R-Right," she stammered. "Let's, uh, let's keep our distance like we usually do, let Kitkun Bay do the talking. Sound good?"

"Yeah…" Leyte softly replied.

"Eh, whatever. You're the boss," Iwo Jima said dismissively. "But on an unrelated topic, what was up with that night battle we had? You've been a zombie ever since."

Enterprise's face fell again, into thought this time, and for a moment, Iwo Jima hoped she'd get some answers.

And then a Zero flew overhead, Japanese meatball roundel prominently displayed.

A low, guttural growl sounded out, and it took Iwo Jima a moment to realize it was coming from Enterprise, who was hunched over and clutching her face.

"The hell?" she muttered. "You okay, Enterprise?"

"Nnnggh…"

Iwo Jima watched, fascinated despite herself, as Enterprise shuddered, and then straightened up again, her face tight and tired.

"I will be once that damn plane goes away," she answered. "And to answer your question, Iwo Jima: demons. Demons that I thought I had under control."

Well, that wasn't ominous at all.

~o~

[So that's the Grey Ghost… She's a big meanie! She didn't need to do that to my Ta-chans!]

[You tell 'em, princess. I mean, fuck, I expected her to be good, but not this good.]

[I've decided! We need to take this fight to their doorstep if we're going to cut them off!]

[P-Princess, that's incredibly dangerous!]

[And the alternative's bein' fucking attrited to death as they get ready to smash us flat.]

[I- fine. But princess, please, we must be ready before we attack.]

[Yeah, I know. We're gonna do this, and we're gonna do this right, and then all those mean shipgirls in Bremerton will all be sorry they messed with my girls!]


	5. Chapter 5

Britain. Perfidious Albion. That Pesky Island. And many other names.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had, for over three hundred years, stood as a consistent foe of any who tried to dominate the Continent. It was in their best interest to do so, after all, lest anyone build up the strength to conquer them, and with a powerful navy and money to spare they had funded proxy after proxy, ripped colonies out of their opponents' hands, and on occasion stepped in themselves to fight on the Continent. And in the postwar world, they had continued to be a key presence in defending Europe from any threat from the Atlantic, first the Soviets and then the Abyssals.

And you know the old saying: you don't know what you have until it's gone.

Richelieu winced as Roma staggered under another salvo from the Abyssal battleships assaulting them. She and the rest of the fast battleships of Germany, Italy, and France made up what the global media had dubbed the "New Big Seven", considering two of the original were now dead, and they were currently beset by an Abyssal force twice their size, steadily bowing back in an increasingly concave crescent. Soon they'd be in a circle and liable to be surrounded, and a glance over the Abyssals' shoulders showed the British fast battleships in a similar predicament about ten miles away.

A dozen Rafales flew overhead, HEAT-tipped Exocets slamming into the Abyssal line, though one went up in a fireball as AA fire tore into its soft underbelly. Still, at such short range, using onboard sensors, the fighters had no chance to miss, and the Abyssals staggered back, giving her the opening she needed.

Drawing her sword, she pointed it at their enemies and upped her steam output.

"Forward!"

The other six battleships - her sister Jean Bart, the Teutonic Twins Bismarck and Tirpitz, and the Italians Vittorio Veneto, Roma, and Littorio - joined her in the charge. Their guns thundered, Richelieu thanking her lucky stars that rigging allowed all of them to fire their guns forward. A pair of Abyssals staggered under the deluge of 15" shells, sending them to the bottom in short order. Still reeling from the Exocet strike and the sudden change in behavior, the Abyssals were unable to react as the fast battleships tore through the hole and sped away, and with low steam were not going to be catching up soon.

"So…" Roma said as she pulled up next to Richelieu. "We are still retreating, yes?"

"Of course," the French battleship replied, before grimacing and spitting out her next line. "Just as soon as I finish wringing those Lobsters' necks for being a pack of stubborn idiots!"

"Perhaps we should switch that order," Roma pointed out.

But there was no time for talk as they came up on the embattled Brits. The Vittorio Veneto sisters immediately sheered to starboard in a line, their guns elevating to their maximum elevation. The Bismarck and Richelieu sisters, meanwhile, were going for something a little more personal.

As shells began raining down on them from behind, the Abyssals were forced to split their fire between the oncoming Euro battleships and the British battle line, something the British shipgirls took gleeful advantage of. Now caught between hammer and anvil, the Abyssal force's only hope was to hold on until the force the Big Seven had left behind could catch up - and sixteen torpedoes from Bismarck and Tirpitz slamming into three of their number, followed by Richelieu and Jean Bart skewering another pair on their swords, rendered that plan impossible. After that, it was just cleanup, and with the Abyssals outnumbered two to one it didn't take long.

"Oh, good, you're here," King George V sighed in relief as the two French battleships shot up the last Abyssal "Now that you're here, we can push forward and hopefully find-"

*CRACK!*

Everyone present winced as Richelieu slapped King George V square on the cheek.

"You idiot!" the French battleship snapped, indicating the surrounding sea. "Look around you!"

She did. To the south were the battleships the Big Seven had left behind, charging up at flank speed and starting to range on the Italians. A pack of PT imps were charging down from the coastline to the north, and corpses littered the English Channel. Most notably, there was a distinct lack of any remaining shipgirls, cruiser, carrier, or destroyer.

"Everyone else has had the good sense to retreat," Richelieu continued, her face a rictus of barely-restrained fury. "Even your carriers. And yet here you are, charging ahead and trying to get your stupid asses killed. Well guess what! Now it's not just your stupid asses on the line, it's ours, too! And we say it's time to go!"

To her immense relief, Richelieu could see that her words were having the desired effect. Though the eyes of the British were downcast, she could see acceptance in them.

Well, with one exception, that is.

"Revenge is still out there, somewhere," Hood stated, drawing herself up to her full, stately height. "And I, for one, am not leaving until-!"

"Did you take stupid pills this morning or something, Hood?!" Bismarck shouted. "Just shut up and come with us!"

Hood's face tightened in anger, and she opened her mouth to fire back-

Only for something to bounce off her head.

"Ow! Bloody hell, who did tha-"

The battlecruiser froze as she beheld the still-grinning head of a Re-class battleship.

"Revenge!"

And then all eyes turned to the battered, bloody, smoking figure approaching them.

"I did not come all the way out here just so you could all get your fool asses killed!" she yelled. "And now you've gone and ruined my big, tearful return! I hope you're happy!"

" _Now_ can we go?" Richelieu demanded of Hood.

"I- fine. Okay."

~o~

The hot waters of the repair bath were heavenly after the long day, and Richelieu moaned in pleasure as she lowered herself in.

"Finally…" she groaned, closing her eyes. "Stupid crazy Lobsters…"

"Tell me about it!" Littorio exclaimed. "What was Revenge even doing out there?"

"She was doing another drive-by again, I'm sure," Tirpitz intoned. "Probably blaring that noise she calls 'music' as loud as she could."

"Yeah, that's… basically what happened," Richelieu replied absently.

Revenge had always been an odd one. Shortly after being summoned she had discovered rap music and dove wholeheartedly into the scene. Everyone was just glad she modeled her style on Jay-Z instead of a less classy rapper, and they learned how to parse her… unique accent.

After the fall of Britain, though, she had changed. Her outfit was now in line with her sisters: blue sailor's jacket, business skirt with stockings, and a sailor's cap. Her speech was good old Queen's English again. The one concession to her old look was a gold chain around her neck, one she refused to let anyone get a good look at.

Of course, her tendency towards drive-bys of Abyssal strongholds with her 15" guns had only intensified.

"She does seem to be determined to live up to her name," Jean Bart pointed out.

"Which would be fine, except that keeps drawing every other damn Brit out on a reckless chase towards the English coast!" Bismarck snapped, throwing her hands up in the air.

And that was the rub, wasn't it? Revenge on her own always inflicted disproportionate damage on the Abyssals, which was the only reason the Admiralty hadn't put their foot down yet. But the remaining British shipgirls, most of them suffering from at least some survivor's guilt, insisted on charging off to her 'rescue' every damn time.

"We can't keep bailing out their asses like this!" Bismarck continued. "Sooner or later, probably sooner, we're going to lose someone doing it! And we need every shipgirl we have!"

Silence fell, and Richelieu cracked one eye open to see every battleship in the dock giving her expectant looks.

"And what do you expect me to do about it?" she groused. "Admiral Masson's been riding their asses for it for weeks! Short of resurrecting Queen Elizabeth herself from her grave-!"

Richelieu froze, and then grinned.

"Never mind," she said. "I think I know who to talk to, and I have a plan." With that, she sunk back into the water and closed her eyes again. "Now, until I'm repaired, I want everyone to shut up, unless they want me to tear their head off."

"Uh, do you mean that figuratively or literally?" Littorio asked nervously.

The smile Richelieu gave in response was the opposite of reassuring.

~o~

Admiral Gabrielle Masson glared at the large TV screen in the command center at Brest, willing it to spontaneously change. To her disappointment, it did not.

The screen depicted the Abyssal-controlled territory in the Atlantic, and the image it painted was sorely discouraging. Abyssal black covered a swath of ocean from Britain to Baffin Island, and completely encompassed the British isles, Iceland, and Greenland. The Submarine Empress still lurked in the sea lanes, Princess-class installations had been dropped off in the two icebound islands, and they were doing _something_ in the ruins of London behind a veritable _army_ of Abyssals.

And on top of that, the survivors of the Royal Navy were proving far less useful than a force the approximate strength of the combined EU fleet should have been. British shipgirls were aggressive at the best of times, as expected of Nelson's navy, but now they exhibited a pathological need to save every one of their number, and to hell with risk to themselves. The carriers, with their ability to strike at long range, could get away with that. Their fellow surface combatants couldn't.

Still, if there was one thing she could be proud of, it was the performance of the combined EU shipgirl force, and not just her French shipgirls. Hardened veterans all, they fought without complaint, stepped up into leadership, and didn't miss a beat as a world desperate for heroes put them on pedestals.

Sighing, Admiral Masson tore her gaze away from the screen. She had to figure out a way to keep the Royal Navy shipgirls from grinding themselves into dust. Tempted as she was to call in some of the other senior officers to help with that, she was in no mood for yet another meeting.

"Uh, Admiral, ma'am?"

The French Admiral turned around to see a nervous sailor poking his head into the room.

"There's someone to see you," he said. "He's very insistent."

Masson mulled that over, then mentally shrugged. "Send him in," she said.

The sailor nodded, then vanished. The newcomer arrived a few seconds later, and it was someone who immediately made Admiral Masson spring to attention.

"Your majesty!" she said in surprise, her hand raised in reflexive salute.

"Ah, please, none of that," Prince Harry of House Windsor said, a sheepish grin on his face. "I'm just a regent. And I'm not used to even that."

"R-Right," she replied, lowering the salute. "What brings you here, Prince Harry?"

"I heard from Richelieu about how our shipgirls have been acting," he replied, his voice soft and traced with regret. "I'm… I wish I had learned about this earlier. I've just been so _busy_ …" His gaze hardened, and his voice went up a few notches. "But I know now. And I think I can help them step back."

"I see," Admiral Masson calmly said, belying the fact that her heart was racing like the Energizer Bunny on Bleep. "If you'll follow me, then?"

The two exited the command center, crossing the base in silence. After a few minutes, though, Prince Harry spoke up.

"Before we meet them, who are the, ah, 'problem children'? I don't think I can help that much if I have to talk to a couple hundred shipgirls," he said, chuckling mirthlessly.

"Mm, the destroyers are surprisingly alright with things. It always amazes me how resilient children can be," Admiral Masson replied after a moment of thought. "That's affected the cruisers, too, especially since we're not sending them alone on the ocean routes anymore. And the carriers… the carriers have been heavily affected, but they were less impetuous to begin with and can afford to take more risks thanks to fighting at a distance. Their war experience can be thanked for that."

"No, it's the battleships that are the problem," the French admiral sighed. "By necessity, they're front and center in any fight against the Abyssals, and they're all heavily decorated by now. People follow them, practically instinctively. And…" Admiral Masson's chuckle had genuine mirth to it. "They're _battleships_. They all think they're the center of the universe. They all think that if they had just been there, this never would have happened."

Prince Harry nodded. "Yes, that makes sense. I've seen it before before with soldiers, particularly officers," he said thoughtfully. "Thank you, Admiral Masson. I think I know how to handle this now. Though, just to clarify, the problem is…?"

"Overprotectiveness and a willful disregard for their own safety combining into some damn reckless behavior."

Another nod. "I thought so."

Soon, they reached the docks holding the Royal Navy battleships, still recovering from their recent pounding in the Channel. Admiral Masson stepped back, letting Prince Harry step into the dock.

Discipline born of years of military service allowed him to - mostly - keep his eyes off the shapely women in swimsuits languishing in the large tub. As such, the despondent air in the room and the downcast eyes of the shipgirls demanded his attention instead.

A quick headcount showed that Revenge and her sisters were not present, nor Renown and Repulse. Something for another day. Instead, he loudly cleared his throat.

Languid eyes tracked over to where he stood, and Hood immediately shot to her feet, eyes wide and a hand raised in salute.

"Your Majesty!" she yelped.

That prompted a mad scramble as all the battleships tried to stand and salute all at once. It took them several seconds and a lot of water spilled out of the tub, but they did so.

"Your Majesty!" they all barked.

Prince Harry grinned sheepishly and attempted to wave them down. "Please, be at ease. This isn't official or anything."

For a moment it looked like the battleships might not listen - and then they all groaned as the aches from their battle damage returned with a vengeance. Splashes rang out as they returned to the water, letting it soak them up to their chins, though it didn't hide the embarrassed blushes.

"W-What brings you here, your majesty?" Hood asked, clearly attempting to regain some dignity.

Prince Harry internally sighed. Well, informality was a long shot anyway. "I actually came here to meet all of you," he said, glancing around the room. Luckily, there was a plastic chair up against a wall, and he quickly retrieved it and sat down next to the tub. "I know it's been hard, losing your friends, your country. I'm sorry I couldn't have come sooner, but-"

"Oh, is that what this is about?" Duke of York scoffed, waving her hand dismissively. "We're fine, your Majesty. Certainly not bad enough for you to trouble yourselves with us."

Despite the blustery words, Prince Harry didn't miss the clench of the battleship's jaw muscles, nor the way her smile didn't reach her eyes, as well as the continued downcast looks of her comrades.

"Perhaps," he conceded. "But it is also clear that something is interfering with your duties."

"We're trying to _save_ our fellow shipgirls!" Hood snapped.

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy," Howe recited.

"And England expects that every man will do his duty," the Prince countered, his voice hard. "A duty that has expanded in this war. Your duty is no longer to England. It is to all of Europe, all of humanity, and you are _shirking_ it by being this reckless."

From the flinches all around, Prince Harry knew his words had hit home.

"Your highest duty at this time is not to destroy the enemy," he pressed. "It is not to risk yourselves to save your comrades. It is to preserve _yourselves_ , for you are all an irreplaceable resource."

The contrition morphed into thought, and then agreement. Or, in one case…

"Well, then why isn't Revenge getting one of these talks?!" Anson demanded. "Most of the time we're attacking the Abyssals to save her stupid ass!"

A genuine smile crept up onto his face, and he pointedly glanced around the room. "Oh dear, it seems she's not here," he said. "I suppose I'll have to talk to her later." Anson flinched, grumbling under her breath. "And just as importantly, Revenge has, for all her recklessness, showed an impressive ability to keep herself alive."

"Just focus on doing your duty to Admiral Masson to the best of your abilities," he finished, standing from the chair. "And I, at least, will find no reproach in your actions."

To his surprise, the battleships all stood again, hands raised in salute. They remained silent as he turned to leave, and only once he was out the door did they dip back into the water.

In the corridor outside, he found Admiral Masson, and the white-clad repair ship HMS Resource, who looked utterly exhausted, soot and burn marks marring her uniform and black bags under her eyes only mostly concealed by aviator sunglasses.

"Ah, Prince Harry, how did it go?" Admiral Masson asked.

"It went well, I think," he replied. "I don't think you'll have the same problems with them running ahead anymore. If you do, feel free to give me a call."

"Good," Admiral Masson sighed, turning to Resource. "Because Resource here recently received an email from Akashi in Japan, and the implications are… well, they're stunning, quite frankly."

One of his eyebrows threatened to crawl up into his hairline at that. For the notably reserved Admiral Masson, that was about as good as saying whatever it was would cure cancer, fix global warming, and shit rainbow unicorns.

"Akashi was testing the possibility of re-summoning sunk shipgirls," Resource picked up, and Prince Harry's other eyebrow joined its brethren at his hairline. Well, that _was_ huge. "The Americans agreed to ship over one of their PT boats for testing, and so far it's been promising enough that she's going to sink the mutt and see if the eggheads in San Diego can re-summon him."

"That…" Prince Harry breathed. "That would change everything if it works."

" _If_ it works," Admiral Masson stressed. "We're keeping this quiet for now. We don't want to raise false hope in case it doesn't work. Hell, we debated telling _you_ , but since you were here and it is very important news..."

The British regent nodded as Admiral Masson trailed off, sending a worried glance towards the dock he'd just left.

"Yes, probably for the best," he agreed. "What can I do to help?"

"Well, nothing for now, but we'll need summoning catalysts if it does work…"

~o~

Revenge sighed as she sat on the roof of the Calais ferry building, currently indefinitely shuttered due to lack of destinations. It was a rare clear day, here in Northern Europe, clear enough that she could see with her optics the white cliffs of Dover.

Reaching over, she retrieved a bottle of English gin, yanking the top off and pouring two glasses.

"Damn, what a view," she breathed as the sun set, bathing the sea in red. "Wish you could see this, Warspite. Cheers."

She took a swig of her gin, pouring herself a fresh glass, and then returned to staring at the distant cliffs as the sun slipped beneath the waves. Just as the bottom of the red sphere touched the horizon, she heard someone step up beside her, and she looked up to see the heavy cruiser Pola sit down beside her, a bottle of wine in hand.

"Do you mind if I join you?" she asked.

The battleship considered that for a moment, before shrugging. "Eh, suit yourself," she said. "I'm a bit surprised to see you here, considering…" She waved vaguely.

Pola's giggle was surprisingly pretty, light like sleigh bells tinkling. "Fear of an opponent always comes with a hefty dose of respect," she answered, pouring out two wine glasses. "She beat us, and beat us badly, and so we fear her even as we respect her abilities."

Revenge made a grunt of vague agreement and, finding her glass of gin empty, took a swig from the bottle.

The two shipgirls sat there in companionable silence, continuing to drink as the sun completed its journey across the sky, and soon the stars and a thin crescent moon were all that illuminated the sea. The distant white cliffs were now obscured, visible only as a black mass.

And in the dead of night, keen eyed lookouts recently scrambled to the tops of their masts spotted a number of black silhouettes out on the water.

"Well. It looks like we've got some Abyssal tossers who think they can take us," Revenge said, her voice slightly slurred by the gin. "What d'you say to that, Pola?"

"Well, to quote an American whose name I've forgotten: Nuts!" the heavy cruiser replied, waving her empty wine bottle in their enemies' general direction.

"Exactly what I was thinking," Revenge nodded, before manifesting her rigging in a flash of light and jumping off the ferry building to land in the water. Behind her, she was pleased to hear Pola do the same, and she dug her heels into the harbor, accelerating towards the Abyssals that dared try something with them around.

The look on the lead Abyssal's face when their empty bottles bounced off its forehead was something Revenge would treasure for the rest of her days.

~o~

Battleship Marat of the Russian Navy gazed out onto the North Sea. With the Germans occupied with helping out along the English Channel, the Russians had assumed responsibility for keeping the sea lanes along the Norwegian coast clear, thus keeping the Abyssals in Britain bottled up. It would have been an impossible task save for the fact that most of the Abyssals' attention was understandably focused on the French coast and the massive EU combined fleet at Brest, and with their oodles of submarines they were mostly succeeding.

Mostly.

As another oil storage tank in Trondheim exploded in the fjord behind her, Marat sighed and cradled her head in her hands.

"You had _one job!"_ she snapped, spinning around to glare behind her. "One job! Tashkent, how did this happen?"

The destroyer leader in question winced and gave a shaky smile. "W-Well, uh, me and my destroyers might have, uh, miscounted how many I-class there were? And one got through?" At the intensified glare from the battleship, she took a step back, frantically waving her hands. "B-But don't worry! It's dead now!"

[Gnaaaaahhhhh…]

The bang of a heavy gun sounded out, and the raspy rattle went silent.

Tashkent's smile became, if that was possible, even shakier. "Okay, now it's definitely dead!"

Marat hung her head in her hands again. Tashkent, Shimakaze, the Le Fantasque sisters… was _every_ high-speed destroyer afflicted with some form of ADHD?

"Just… get your destroyers back to Trondheim, Tashkent," she said through her hands. "We'll talk about this later."

The destroyer leader couldn't comply fast enough, and once she was gone Marat stood up again and gazed out into the North Sea. She could see the floating corpses of the Abyssals out on the water, and knew that there was another, longer string of them stretching all the way to Great Britain.

"Good work," she said to thin air.

The sea next to her boiled, and then the submarine K-21 surfaced next to her, water sloughing off her dark hair and wetsuit.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked, her usually stoic face scrunched up in adorable confusion.

"I didn't," Marat replied. "Good job with those Abyssals. I doubt we would have been able to take the full force."

"Ah, it feels good to finally bag a battleship," K-21 sighed contentedly. "You're welcome. Also, if you're worried about the operational tempo, don't. We can keep this up for quite a while. And if we can't, the Germans have agreed to loan us some of their submarines if we ask."

"I wasn't."

K-21 glanced up at Marat, finding her still staring off towards distant Britain. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

Marat jerked, then shook her head. "No, it's nothing. Let's head back."

As the two navigated through the fjord, K-21 mulled the words over in her head, then mentally shrugged. She wasn't built to think about that sort of thing. She was built to sink ships. Let one of Marat's sisters handle… whatever this was.

~o~

"Do I have to?"

Moreno pinched the bridge of her nose as she and her sister navigated the South Atlantic swells. She hated taking the lead in anything, preferring to let the much more outgoing Rivadavia do so. But, well, when it came to these shipgirls…

"Yes, Rivadavia, you do," she snapped. "Dunkerque and Strasbourg are the only capital ships in any position to help us if we get in a bind. Which means you need to suck up your pride and properly apologize to them!"

"But they're so annoying!" Rivadavia whined. "I'm not even French, and I still think they're being offensively stereotypical!"

"They annoy me too!" Moreno shot back. "But you don't see me flat-out saying they're overcompensating for not being born French!"

"I only said that because it's true!"

An image of her ripping off Rivadavia's arm and beating her to death with it flashed through Moreno's head, and it took an effort of will to not act on it. Seriously, what was it about the French battleships that made her sister lose all of her sense of reason?

"Rivadavia… shut up," she growled. "Just… shut up."

Her sister had the good sense to do so, and they continued on in stony silence. Even their destroyers, who had been watching the ongoing argument with rapt eyes, were quiet.

The hours slid by as they continued to steam on through the featureless sea. Eventually, though, Rivadavia steamed up to her, and Moreno couldn't quite force herself to ignore her.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "You're right, it's more than just annoyance. Their… patriotism isn't the right word, but whatever. It makes me uncomfortable, especially with how _loud_ they are about it."

Moreno nodded in understanding. It was something she was uncomfortable with, too, especially after reading up on Argentina's postwar history.

"I'll try to keep it in check, okay?" Rivadavia continued. "But I think it'll be easier if I just… stay away from them as much as possible."

"You still need to apologize to them," Moreno reminded her, though pointedly not refuting the point.

"Ugh, don't remind me."

It was a much more companionable silence that fell across the Argentinians this time. The destroyers finally went back to chatting with each other, and it didn't take them long to draw Rivadavia in.

"... no way he said that!" the battleship gasped dramatically. "There's no way! It's suicide!"

"He did," La Rioja smugly replied, crossing her arms. "Oh, the flame wars that produced…"

"Ah, we're here," Moreno interrupted as the distant mountains of Saint Helena loomed in the distance.

The island, much like most of Britain's remaining overseas dependencies, had assumed considerable administrative duties in the wake of the island's fall thanks to the wonders of telecommunications. It had been chosen for the upcoming meeting because the British, being disliked by both the French and Argentinians, made a fairly safe neutral ground. If there was one thing they could agree on, it was that Perfidious Albion could use the occasional kick in the pants.

The Argentine shipgirls, now entirely business, came ashore at James Bay, and made their way to one of the island's old manor houses, where they were to meet the French ships over a meal.

As it turned out, the French ships were seated outside, Dunkerque and Strasbourg sitting at the tables with two destroyers looming behind them, their Zouave uniforms and near-cruiser stature identifying them as Mogador and Volta.

"'Allo, Rivadavia, Moreno!" Strasbourg called out, waving her hand. "Come, seet down, seet down!"

The two Argentinian battleships pulled out their own chairs and sat down, a waiter ghosting up to them and dropping off menus.

"You must try ze veal," Dunkerque purred. "Ze best I've ever had outside of Italia!"

"Noted," Moreno said, scanning over the items. Mentally making her selection, she placed down the menu and turned her gaze on the two French battleships. "So. What's this all about? You didn't actually say in your email, and while we have our own reasons for being here…"

Strasbourg leaned forward, hands tented in front of her face but not quite covering the decidedly not-nice smile on her face.

"We 'ave some… reinforcements," she said. Moreno didn't so much as twitch. "Ze Renown sisters apparently wanted zome different scenery. And so, zey are in Dakar, waiting for assignments."

"I see," Moreno nodded. "In that case, we'll take Repulse, and four Hunt-class destroyers."

Strasbourg blinked, giving Dunkerque an opening.

"What? Zat makes no sense!" she yelled. "Renown is ze more experienced, ze more advanced of ze two! Why would you pass zat up?!"

"Simple," Moreno explained. "Repulse fits our doctrine better. We have to fight at closer range, meaning her upper belt is an advantage and her lesser fire control and turret elevation not a problem. In addition, her experience as a Royal transport should give her the diplomatic traits to better work with my sister and I. And in turn, Renown, being capable of long-range fire, fits your fighting style better."

Dunkerque leaned back, blinking in surprise. Strasbourg hadn't moved an inch.

"I must say, Moreno," she remarked. "I was expecteeng a much more… difficult time with zis." Standing, she extended a hand. "I agree to zese terms."

"Excellent," Moreno replied, grabbing the hand and shaking, grinning even as she did so. "So, when can I expect those destroyers?"

Strasbourg blinked, her head tilting to the side. "Eh?"

"I did say we wanted Repulse and four Hunt-class escort destroyers," she answered, unable to resist the urge to smirk. "And now that we've agreed…"

There was a moment, and then Strasbourg's head thunked to the table. "Ah… I 'ave been defeated…" she groaned. "Clearly, you and your sister's reputation 'as not been exaggerated."

"Mm," Moreno agreed, not mentioning that her sister, while just as good a negotiator as her, was decidedly less… subtle about it.

The waiter returned, taking their orders, and once he was out of sight, the Argentinian battleship turned to her sister. "Rivadavia, you're up."

The battleship let out a pained grunt, and then turned to face the two French shipgirls. "Alright…" she said through gritted teeth. "I said some… not very nice things the last time we met-"

"Understatement," Dunkerque muttered under her breath, earning her an elbow jab from her younger sister.

"And I wanted to apolo-"

Everyone present gave Rivadavia an odd look as she seized up and went rigid, seeming to choke on her words.

"Uh, sis?" Moreno asked hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just give me a minute," she replied. Several coughs and clearings of throat followed, at which point Rivadavia picked up her earlier speech. "I'm sor-"

Once again, everyone present was treated to the sight of Rivadavia choking on her words, her hands shooting up to her throat. This time, though, Moreno had a good idea why, and she barely resisted the urge to facepalm.

"What eez wrong with your seester?" Dunkerque wondered aloud, before snapping her fingers and fishing something out of her pocket. "Cough drop?"

If looks could kill, the glare Rivadavia levelled at the French battleship would have vaporized her and half of Africa.

"I am trying to _apologize_ , you walking piles of stereotypes!" she snapped - before immediately freezing and clapping her hands to her mouth.

"Eet was just a question…" Dunkerque muttered as she pulled back and pocketed the cough drop.

"Apology accepted, Rivadavia," Strasbourg smoothly replied. "We 'ave heard worse, and given worse. Ze English were such fun to rile up."

"Were?" Moreno repeated as Rivadavia sighed in relief next to her.

Strasbourg sighed, her face mournful. "Believe it or not, we do 'ave enough tact to know zat zis eez not ze time."

"It's a fucking miracle..." Rivadavia muttered under her breath.

That killed any further conversation. At least, until their food arrived.

Looking at the steaming plate in front of her, Moreno picked up her knife and fork and cut off a strip of meat, daintily placing it in her mouth and chewing.

"Well, what do you know?" she said, swallowing. "The veal is good."

~o~

Four I-class destroyers puttered through the Rhine delta, occasionally pausing to take ineffectual potshots at the F-35 orbiting overhead. I-class destroyers were not, as Abyssals went, terribly bright, and so they were so focused on the fighter that they didn't notice the unnatural rustles of the shrubbery lining the dike.

HMS Cossack lowered her binoculars as two of the Abyssals bumped into each other, prompting them to start barking and biting at each other, and reached up to adjust her black fur shako, only to realize for the fifth time that day that it wasn't there.

"So?" Cassard asked from behind her. "Have they gone sufficiently stupid yet?"

Wafting notes of barking Abyssal chatter drifted into their hiding spot.

"I'd call that a yes," Pantera said, grinning in anticipation. She lifted one of her twin 4.7" gun turrets up and held it out. "Guns up."

Cossack and Cassard did the same, two twin 4.7" and a single 5.4" clanking together.

That done, they burst from their vegetative cover, braced themselves on the water, and fired a full broadside at the nearest I-class, shouting and whooping at the top of their lungs. With that much firepower aimed its way at ranges Horatio Nelson would have deemed close, it pretty much disintegrated, and sank into the canal, wailing.

The other three destroyers turned to face the threat, only to scatter as the Anglo-French-Italian trio unleashed their torpedoes. Eleven torpedoes against two destroyers was overkill, but it did ensure that both targets were sent to the bottom in a properly prompt manner.

The last Abyssal decided, as much as it could, that discretion was the better part of valor, and turned on its heel to sprint away.

"Oh no you don't!" Cossack barked, drawing her sword and speeding off in pursuit.

"There she goes," Cassard sighed. "Ah well, we'd best go sup-" The French destroyer cut herself off as she saw that Pantera was gone, and turned back seaward to see the Italian destroyer following Cossack's wake.

"We hunt!" she growled.

Cassard sighed and shook her head, but there was a smile on her face the whole time, and when she took off in pursuit of both the Abyssal and her errant comrades, she knew one thing.

She never wanted this to end.

~o~

U-47 quietly laid on the surface of the North Atlantic, an Abyssal transport in her sights. No one had yet managed to adequately explain why the Abyssals even had transports in the first place, but the Admiralty had been quite content to shrug and mark them as targets.

This one clearly had no idea she or any other submarine was nearby, steaming fat, straight, and dumb through the Atlantic swells. Lining up a torpedo shot was almost trivially easy, especially with no distractions to throw off her aim.

"GREETINGS, U-47!"

The Type VII flinched at the booming voice from behind her, the action emptying her tubes. The torpedoes flew hot, straight, and true, and three slammed into the Abyssal, sending it to the bottom with a keening wail. The U-boat spun around and glared at the one who had distracted her; her shot had worked out, but U-47 had not gotten to the top of the submarine leaderboard by counting on things 'working out'.

"Upholder!" she hissed, the British submarine not flinching under her gaze. The U-class submarine wore a Victorian-era swim costume, albeit one intended for men, and aside from a lone tuft that sat nearly vertical her blonde hair was tied up in a neat bun.

Speaking of said tuft, it was currently perched on Upholder's upper lip, and U-47 mentally groaned in anticipation.

"VERILY, IT IS I, UPHOLDER, GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!" came the reply, which could probably be heard in Halifax.

"Right…" U-47 ground out. "Look, Upholder, we've been over this. You can't keep sneaking up on people and scaring them with that voice of yours. You nearly threw off my shot!"

"PAH! YOU ARE U-47! SUCH A DISTRACTION IS NOTHING TO ONE AS ILLUSTRIOUS AS YOU!" Upholder boomed in reply, and despite herself U-47 felt a twinge of joy at the compliment. "AND BESIDES, A TRUE GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER! MUST SPEAK LIKE THIS, TO MAKE SURE ALL MAY KNOW THEIR NAME!"

Aaaand there went any good feelings. Reaching out, U-47 grabbed Upholder by her swimsuit, pulled her close, and smacked their foreheads together to maximize the effect of her glare.

"Upholder…" she hissed. "I swear to God, if you don't put on your indoor voice, I will reach down your throat, grab you by the spleen, and _turn you inside out._ "

Slowly, silently, Upholder reached up, pulled off her fake mustache, and returned it to its place on top of her head. "Better?" she asked in a more normal volume.

"Much," the U-boat groaned, stepping back and rubbing her temples. "Now go away. I've got ships to sink."

"Ah, actually, that's what I'm here for," Upholder stated. "The Admiralty assigned me to be your wingmate for this cruise."

U-47 froze in the process of diving, and then craned her neck skyward, her eyes dull and lifeless. "What did I do in a past life to deserve this?" she whispered.

Upholder sighed, and then steamed up next to U-47. "Look, U-47, I know I'm…" She paused, searching for the words.

"So hammy you're practically cured?" U-47 intoned.

A grin spread over the British submarine's face. "You do have a sense of humor! I was wondering." Another glare from U-47 prompted her to cough and continue. "Right, yes, moving on, I know what I am, and that I annoy… pretty much everyone except Revenge. But I _am_ good at this whole submarine business. If I promise to keep it to a dull roar, do you promise to at least let me show what I can do?"

"... Fine."

"Splendid! Shall we get to it? I passed by a small cruiser force on the way here taking on fuel, shall we go bag them and the tanker?"

~o~

A Ne-class heavy cruiser sprinted up and over the high waves of the stormy North Sea. Something was happening near the new Empress. She could feel it, and so could every Abyssal in the Atlantic. As one of the Abyssals assigned to Dover patrol duty, she had been the closest, and with her speed she knew she was going to be the first there.

Cresting another wave, the mouth of the Thames came into view - and more importantly, the pall of smoke rising from the ruins of the great city deep inland. Gritting her teeth, she pushed her already taxed engines a little further. She had to get there. She had to!

Coming up another day, she reached the peak - and then a hand lashed out and grabbed her by the throat.

[Glk!]

The figure in front of her was battered and torn, machinery and metal visible under shredded skin and ripping blood. And yet, the Ne-class felt fear shoot through her. Eyes blazing with an inner fire, lips turned down to bare a few molars, brows knitted together, it all combined to paint a picture of utter rage and hate. The kind that didn't let a little thing like major damage stop it.

"Ah, good," the apparition said, the Ne-class noting a gold chain flash around the thing's chest. It was such an incongruous detail that her brain ended up briefly stalling. "I need you to deliver a message."

With a start, the Ne-class came back to Earth, and her lips curled back in a vicious snarl. [You'll never get away with this!] she growled. [Whatever you did to the Empress, we'll return a- ack!]

"Don't care," the shipgirl blithely replied as she applied pressure. "Here's the message you can give to your Empress: I don't forgive. I don't forget. And when we retake our island, I'm coming for you, and I'll make what I did today seem like the Anglo-Zanzibar War."

The iron grip on her neck vanished, and the Ne-class fell to the water, hacking and clutching her throat.

[A-And who is this message from?] she croaked. As much as her duty to the Empress demanded it, no way was she tangling with this monster! Suicidal Abyssals weren't much use, after all.

"HMS Revenge," the battleship replied, turning on her heel and steaming in the direction of the French coast. "She'll know the name."

~o~

And indeed, she did know the name. The Ne-class cruiser shivered from her prostrate position in front of the throne of the new Abyssal Empress, who had yet to choose her name.

[So, she objects to my existence, eh?] the Empress said, brushing a short lock of hair away from her face. [I'm almost impressed, I didn't think any of them would be able to commit to killing me.]

[We should kill her,] one of the imposing figures next to the Empress intoned. Though all had minor differences in appearance, the four new Princesses all strongly resembled each other - and the Empress herself.

[With what?] one of the other Princesses demanded. [She's torn through everything else we've thrown at her.]

[We'll give it one more try with conventional forces,] the Empress continued, reaching out to stroke the cheek of the Abyssal that had just spoken. [And then, if that doesn't work, we'll which one of you can kill her first.]

The Ne-class shivered as the four Princesses all cackled gleefully at that.

[Oh, I almost forgot about you.]

With a wave of her hand, the Empress disintegrated the poor Abyssal, the motion shifting the ornate black dress she wore, revealing just a hint of scarring on her chest and legs. [After all, I'd rather not leave anyone who knows about dear Revenge.]


	6. Chapter 6

_Fire. Death. The sea was ablaze with fire and screams. Islands, once verdant green, burned merrily, massive plumes of black smoke reaching into the sky. The darkness pressed in from all sides, relentless, and never slowed for long. Distant figures could be seen among the blazes, fighting… and dying. Even as she watched, another small body collapsed into the waves, unnoticed by the others present._

 _The figures rapidly dwindled, their dying screams filling the air. Shadows fell, but more always rose to take their place. Soon, only one figure remained, standing battered but defiant in the face of her death._

 _But it did not come. One of the shadows split from the pack, ghosting up to the figure. The two touched._

 _[Yes… you will be quite suitable.]_

 _The screams returned, but these were not screams of pain. They were screams of rage, of defiance - and of sorrow._

 _But all screams must end, and so too did this one. The figure was gone. And in its place stood another shadow._

 _As one, the shadows turned towards her, the mass of black broken by white, wide smiles._

 _[And you will be quite suitable, too.]_

~o~

"DAH!"

Enterprise sat bolt upright in her bed, panting and sweating. Catching her breath, she leaned forward, head resting on her hand.

"A nightmare…" she muttered. "Was that… Scapa?"

Though not the first time she'd had a nightmare in her time in human form, she hadn't had one since she'd gotten back, and the subject matter was new. Most of her nightmares were of the War, memories and regrets, and were never as clear as this one.

Grumbling under her breath, Enterprise put the dream out of her mind and stood to start freshening up. Once dressed, she headed out to the mess, pointedly trying to ignore the wary stares every shipgirl in the room was giving her.

After her rather… brutal display on the convoy run, most of the Bremerton shipgirls had been giving her a wide berth, the power of rumor nigh-instantly spreading the story out from the carrier group. The battleships were an exception, and honestly, while that helped, the battleships could be a tad… bloodthirsty in their support, which wasn't helping with everyone else. At least she hadn't had to face Oriskany, still recuperating in the docks.

Quickly getting her food, she sat down at an empty table well away from everyone else, and began slowly picking away at the mountain.

She'd barely made any progress when someone sat down in front of her, a mountain of food as large as hers piled on the creaking tray.

"Uh, h-hey," Iwo Jima said, waving hesitantly. "M-Mind if I sit here?"

Enterprise looked up and stared for a second before nodding. "Yeah, sure." Her mood somewhat better, she turned back to the yellow mass the Navy had the gall to call scrambled eggs, her fork taking out a large scoop.

For a few minutes, she just ate, making a sizable dent in the pile of food. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Iwo Jima fidgeting, her own food largely untouched but hell, if she wanted to say something, she could say it herself!

… On second thought, it was annoying and she did have a question for the other carrier.

"So, what's with the personality change?" she asked through a mouthful of hash browns. "I mean, you were timid and nervous the entire time I was here, then we went on a mission and you were forceful and kinda snarky, and then now you're back to timid. What gives?"

"Oh!" Iwo Jima yelped, jerking in place as she realized she was being addressed. "I, uh, I…" The last part was mumbled too quietly to hear.

Enterprise frowned. "What was that? I didn't catch that."

"I… use a hypnotic self suggestion on myself to keep from panicking on sorties…" she mumbled. "I-I'm not actually that brave."

"Pff," Enterprise snorted after a moment of silence. "Not brave, my ass. Bravery is going out and doing something no matter what your panicky hindbrain is screaming. Your method is… weird, but who am I to judge?" Shrugging, Enterprise tucked back into her meal, throwing out one last comment. "By the way, you looked like you had something you wanted to say."

Once again Iwo Jima twitched in place. "W-Well, I, uh… I… Why did you go all… spooky last time?"

That drew another snort out of the carrier, though this one was amused instead of derisive. "Spooky…" she chuckled. "That's a good one. Anyway…" She grimaced; this was not something she liked talking about. "I-"

Suddenly pausing, Enterprise glanced up towards the ceiling, her brows furrowed.

"What's-" Iwo Jima began, only to clam up at a raised hand.

Enterprise's frown intensified as she tried to figure out what she was listening to. It was a familiar sound, what was-

Her eyes widened, just as something slammed into the earth in the base outside, followed a split-second later by a colossal explosion.

"Artillery, I fucking knew it!" she spat. "Iwo, are you armed and fueled up?!"

"M-Mostly, ma'am!" the Essex instinctively replied.

"Good, meet me out on the water!" Enterprise said, sprinting for the docks and summoning her rigging as she went.

Bursting out of the cafeteria, the extent of the damage became clear: quite a few large shells had obliterated several buildings on base, and the whistling of incoming shells told her that the attackers weren't going away. As the salvo slammed into the distant piers, barely missing the Kitty Hawk, Enterprise drew her crossbow and a magazine of Dauntlesses in one smooth motion, firing off all five in twenty seconds. Stowing her launcher again, she sprinted for the water.

By the time she reached the piers, or what was left of them, she'd gathered an ad-hoc group of destroyers in her wake, and the rest of Bremerton's shipgirls weren't far behind. Her radar was screaming, an Abyssal battleship group clear as day on the charts squatting at the entrance to the Sinclair Inlet. She winced; they were right next to Bainbridge Island and the town there. Even as she considered that, though, the first reports from her Dauntlesses were coming in.

It wasn't good.

Three groups of Abyssal battleships - six each, backed up by heavy cruisers and destroyers aplenty - were in the Sound, one pummeling Seattle, another ranging on McChord Air Force Base to the south, and, of course, the group sitting at the end of the inlet. No carriers were in sight, and that was perhaps the worst part of it, because she couldn't discount the possibility that they _were_ carriers out there.

"Damn…" Enterprise muttered, turning towards the oncoming crowd. "Oriskany, we've got- what are you wearing?!"

The Essex scowled, her face flushed as more than a few shipgirls stared at the black string bikini she was wearing under her rigging.

"I'd just gotten out of the docks!" she snapped. "And clothes are the least of our worries right now! Sitrep?"

"Three battleship groups, the one you can see out there, another near Seattle, and another near Tacoma," Enterprise quickly rattled off. "Carriers haven't been seen, but I'd bet my airgroup that they're out there somewhere. Orders?"

Oriskany, who had been staring out to sea, jerked in place. "Uh, w-well… um… First, we should… er… give me a minute, okay?"

As her superior turned back to staring out at sea, occasionally muttering something under her breath, Enterprise came to a horrified realization: Oriskany, the shipgirl in charge, the one she trusted to lead more than herself, had no idea what to do. And who could blame her? Outnumbered, outgunned, with potential enemy carriers lurking just out of sight… for a methodical person like Oriskany, the lack of information would be paralyzing.

A steam horn drew her attention, and she turned to see the Kitty Hawk and escorts sortieing - right as one of the destroyers walked right into a salvo of heavy shells, the high explosives within igniting its missiles in a colossal explosion.

' _Halsey…'_ Enterprise realized as she watched the shattered bow slip beneath the waves. Her fists clenched at her sides. Dammit, if no one else could do it…

"Stand up, Oriskany!" she barked. "We're sortieing!"

" _About fucking time!"_ West Virginia shouted over the ship-to-ship. " _What's the plan?"_

"WeeVee, I want your battleships in front," Enterprise answered. "Carriers, I want planes in the air yesterday. I want strikes on the battleship groups near Seattle and Tacoma, and I want those carriers found."

"T-The battleships out there?" Oriskany questioned.

"We have battleships of our own." A feral grin spread across Enterprise's face. "The Abyssals don't stand a chance."

"And what about us?"

The carrier turned again, this time looking over the mass of cruisers and destroyers behind her, all looking up in expectation.

"I'm going to trust you all know what you're doing, and leave it up to you," she replied.

Silence met that proclamation.

"This is _not_ a plan!" Salem shouted from the crowd.

"It's barely even a concept," Iwo Jima muttered.

Agreeing murmurs broke out in the crowd, but they fell silent when Enterprise raised her hand. "Okay, yeah, this is reckless and vague," the redhead snapped. "But dammit, it's less risky than staying here and hoping none of us catch a shell!"

As if to punctuate the point, another salvo screamed overhead, slammed into the earth, and exploded, demolishing some more buildings.

"And I don't know about you, but I'd rather die fighting, if it comes to that," she finished. "Move out!"

"Great speech," Iwo Jima snarked as the shipgirls hit the water, WeeVee's battleships leading the way.

"You try coming up with super-inspiring stuff on the fly," Enterprise shot back. "And besides, it seems to have worked."

Even as she said it, a quartet of grim-faced destroyer escorts ran by to jump in the water. One of them pulled out a flask, and passed it around, and Enterprise could smell the pungent stench of diesel on the wind.

Once everyone was on the water and steaming out, the shipgirls settled into a loose, ad-hoc formation, carriers at the rear, battleships up front, and cruisers and destroyers scattered haphazardly in between. The thin-skinned Kitty Hawk and escorts were all too eager to huddle behind their more sturdy organic counterparts.

The Abyssals were not long in noticing the new threat, but they naturally gravitated towards the front line of battleships, leaving the carriers unmolested by the burgeoning gun duel and launching planes. Attacks by lighter Abyssal forces were thwarted by the cruisers and destroyers that moved up in front of the battleships, hosing them down with 6" and 5" shells, leaving the battleships to trade shots at short range.

As for the carriers, the heavier fleet ships, with their more powerful launching systems, got their planes aloft first. The strike package was forming up when Kitty Hawk launched a pair of F-35s from her bow catapults, prompting Oriskany to frown in thought.

"Enterprise," she said, loading up one last launch on her rifle. "Permission to split off my aircraft with the Kitty Hawk strike?"

The aircraft were odd, stubby things with swept wings and two podded jet engines slung under their wings. "Sure," Enterprise said, puzzled. "But what are those for?"

"Oh, just a little something to help out Kitty Hawk's pilots," she said, grinning and firing.

Mentally shrugging, Enterprise ordered her pilots towards the southern battleship group, Iwo Jima's and Leyte's planes following. Oriskany's and Kitty Hawk's jets sped off about ten minutes later, drawing appreciative cheers and whistles from the gathered shipgirls. A strike package from the escort carriers trundled along after it; for all that modern weapons could fuck up the many critical components above armor, torpedoes were still the best way to dispatch Abyssal battleships from the air.

Now they had to play the waiting game, waiting for their planes to make their runs and waiting for WeeVee and company to finish off the battleships. Not all were idle, though. The many destroyer escorts had fanned out and were lashing the seabed with their sonar, while the heavy cruisers, as yet unengaged, were launching seaplanes to add in more scouting.

Somehow, they remained unattacked; even the orbiting AWACS, both from Kitty Hawk and Oriskany, hadn't spotted anything.

"What are they doing?" Enterprise muttered.

"I'm kinda surprised they're leaving they're battleships out to dry like that," Iwo Jima remarked. "That's good, though, right?"

"Yeah… Yeah, I'll take it," the Yorktown replied, frowning. "But I don't like it."

She watched through her pilots' eyes as the dive bombers tilted nose down to suppress AA, bombs savaging the battleships and their escorts. And as they pulled away, the torpedo bombers joined in, the desultory AA fire left from the dive bombers' runs unable to stop enough fish from slamming in the battleships' soft underbellies to send them to the bottom. And from the cheers Enterprise could hear next to her, the strike against the Seattle force had gone well, too.

After a few more minutes, the thunder of heavy gunfire that had been going on nigh-continuously for the entire battle fell silent, and a ragged cheer came from forward.

" _Scratch six battleships!"_ West Virginia crowed.

"Okay…" Enterprise muttered as the cheering intensified. "What's your next move? Because I refuse to believe you don't have one ready."

"Got them!"

All eyes turned to Newport News, who was pumping her fist with a huge grin on her face.

"I found more Abyssals, up in Deception Pass!" she elaborated. "Getting a count now! That's…" She trailed off, her grin dissolving into stunned horror. "That's a lot of carriers… And-"

The heavy cruiser flinched, and turned to Enterprise, her face apologetic. "My seaplane got shot down, but I got a good look at that fleet. There's…" The stunned horror twisted into a resigned grimace. "A dozen carriers, all standard Wo-class, with cruiser escort, and… And they've got an Air Defense Princess. I… I think we might be fucked."

Silence fell, everyone present unable to argue the point. A dozen fleet carriers, versus five fleet carriers and sixteen escort carriers? That wasn't an impossible fight, but the odds weren't great, especially with a good chunk of their limited ammunition expended. The addition of the Air Defense Princess, though, was just plain _unfair_. The last Air Defense Princess the American Navy had fought had fended off the _entire_ Seventh Fleet's air groups - twenty-six fleet carriers and nine light carriers, for those counting - until the Iowa sisters had made a high-speed dash in to shoot it to death. With it there, dollars to donuts the Wos had loaded up for strike with a minimal fighter count. As trump cards hidden up their sleeve went, it was a damn good one.

And yet, that nagging feeling in her gut just wouldn't go away, that this _still_ wasn't everything.

Then two dozen rocket engines echoed over the Sound, and Enterprise resisted the urge to curse the heavens as that gut feeling picked that time to go away. Sea Sparrows sprang from the missile tubes on the nearby missile destroyers, and every shipgirl in range opened up with their guns, but only two of the astonishingly fast missiles were downed before they slammed into the orbiting AWACS, Tracers and Hawkeyes alike, neatly disintegrating them.

"How-" Enterprise began before being interrupted over the ship-to-ship.

" _Fucking hell, I've got eight Re-class on my screens! Where the hell'd they come from?!"_

The Re-class. The most feared of any Abyssal that wasn't an Installation. The speed and agility of a cruiser, the firepower and armor of a battleship, the plane capacity of a light carrier, the ability to submerge and fire torpedoes, and now, from the looks of things, _fucking SAMs._

"Can you hold?" she asked West Virginia.

" _Maybe,"_ came the reply. " _We've all got damage, though, and we're running low on ammo. Gonna be tight."_ There was a pause, and then a muffled curse. " _Scratch that, that's_ if _the bastards don't outflank us. No promises on that front."_

Enterprise gritted her teeth. With her planes still coming in, she had no good way to beat eight Re-class, and there was still that carrier murderball sitting up north. But they also couldn't fight both. Even if they beat the battleships, they would be strung out across too much ocean, unless they risked the carriers, and that wasn't happening. Already they were spread out over most of the Sinclair Inlet, the battleships drifting into the Central Basin, inviting defeat in detail via carrier strike.

 _Burning islands, screaming shipgirls, the darkness washing over_ _ **everything, killing and corrupting and which one was WORSE DYING HONORABLY OR BEING FORCED TO-**_

She slapped her face. No, that would _not_ happen. There was no safe way for her to take on eight Re-class, but there was a decidedly _un-_ safe way, and this was definitely dire enough to merit it.

"Iwo, Leyte, I'll need you to handle my planes," Enterprise announced, reaching up to unlatch her flight deck. "Oriskany, organize the defense. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a strike inbound already."

"R-Right," the latter stammered, sending her a confused look. "And… what are you going to be doing?"

"I'm going to be busting up that line," the carrier answered, reaching up to grasp her hat - and then pulling down.

~o~

Iwo Jima knew what she was: a surprise. No one had expected an incomplete Essex from the summoning ritual, and she had, at first, been eager to prove her skills.

Skills that, as Lexteen quickly discovered, were basically nonexistent.

And so she had been shuffled north to be beaten into shape by Oriskany, her self-confidence shattered, leaving behind a shy, timid, easily frightened girl. It was why she had developed her hypnotic technique. She couldn't fight as she was, but with the hypnosis she was fearless.

No longer. Iwo had started off confused as Enterprise reached up to that weird Abyssal-y hat she always wore, but when she pulled it down everything became frightfully clear.

Enterprise was an _Abyssal_. That was the only explanation. And an incredibly _powerful_ one. The miasma she gave off as the hat - no, helm - slid down over her face was _suffocating_. The carrier hunched over, her clawed gloves seeming to become _sharper_ , blending in with the skin of her arms, and her face contorted into a wordless snarl, blood dripping down from her mercifully covered eyes. And then she _roared_.

"GWAAAOOOOOOOO!"

Crouching down, the thing that had been Enterprise placed its knee and one hand on the water, and then _flew_ off of it, shooting forward like a rifle shot. Soon she was out of sight, and that broke the paralysis.

"Move, move!" Oriskany barked, waving the scattered cruisers and destroyers into position. "This anti-air formation needs to be _perfect_ if we're going to survive this! If any of you is so much as a _centimeter_ out of place I will personally kick your ass once we get to hell!"

' _Ah, there's the old Oriskany,'_ Iwo Jima mused as she slid into place herself.

That done, the carrier tuned out the ongoing maneuvers, holding out her arm and the flight deck on it to retrieve hers and Enterprise's planes. Most of her attention instead went to her long-range optics, an old Japanese set she'd swiped and had had refurbished and installed in case she'd ever need it. For what, she didn't know, but it sure was coming in handy now.

With the optics, she could see the Abyssal that was Enterprise crash into the line of Re-class battleships like J.J. Watt hitting the Colts' offensive line, one getting faceshanked right off the bat, and laying into the rest with claws and flight deck.

"Honestly, I don't know who's the bigger monster," she muttered, but movement at the far end of the formation caught her attention.

A long look revealed the battleships limping back in, and yes, limping was the right word. All sported the ragged clothes and bleeding craters of moderate damage, and both Mississippi and Pennsylvania had to be supported by their sisters, their legs twisted at unnatural angles.

Switching on her ship-to-ship, she caught one last bit of invective from West Virginia. " _... and they have torpedoes, too! That's such_ bullshit! _I want to find whoever thought up the Re-class, and then kick them in the nards until they die!"_

Ah, that explained the leg injuries. Pulling back again, Iwo Jima took in the overall picture: the messy, ad-hoc formation they'd been in was changing into an unwieldy, way-too-large AA formation. The Kitty Hawk and escorts were steaming past at twenty-five knots, likely to get to the somewhat more open waters of the Central Basin.

' _Good luck, you guys,'_ she thought, saluting as they passed.

And… yup, Enterprise was beating a Re-class to death with one of its comrades' tails, even as she hosed down another with her flight deck-mounted 3" guns. Somehow, Iwo Jima wasn't surprised.

"... Jima…"

The carrier jerked in place, turning her full attention back to Oriskany. "Ah, uh… yes? What is it?"

Her sister huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "I've been trying to get your attention for five minutes!" she grumbled. "Anyway, as soon as your fighters are refueled and rearmed, I want them up in the air. Between the Big Five's radar sets and some picket destroyers, we should be able to see any airstrikes coming, and I want us to be ready to intercept them."

"Right," Iwo Jima replied, before glancing out into the Central Basin. "And Enterprise?"

That drew a sigh and a shake of the head from Oriskany. "Nothing we can do," she replied sadly. "Our best bet is to hope she goes after that carrier group and kills the Air Defense Princess for us."

Iwo Jima glanced pointedly at the ongoing curbstomp Enterprise was dishing out. "Have I mentioned that I hate this plan?" she grumbled.

"Once or twice," came the answer.

"Well, it's worth saying again," the carrier replied, throwing her hands up in the air. "This plan sucks rancid donkey balls!"

~o~

Rage. Hate. This was all the beast known as the Grey Ghost had ever known. Well, that wasn't quite true. It knew the thrill of the hunt, of matching wits and powers with its foes, and then seeing its life blood drain from their corpses. But it was an ephemeral, fleeting feeling, and one the Grey Ghost knew somewhere in its instincts it had best not get used to.

As such, when she tore out the throat of the last of the Shadows, she paused to let her more… familiar emotions take hold again. Her mouth curled back into a familiar snarl, and raised her nose seeming to sniff the air.

There. North. More Shadows, lots of Shadows. To the west, her… The Grey Ghost shook her head. The words weren't there to describe that feeling, warm and not scary at all. Pack didn't feel right, either. Regardless, they were not to be attacked, but protected. The Shadows threatened them.

The Shadows had to die.

Crouching, the Grey Ghost dug her heels into the water and sped north. The Shadows would die, and the warm beings would be protected. That was a promise.

It was not long before she ran into the first of the Shadows: the small ones, insignificant except for the fact that they always heralded more and hit harder than their small size suggested. In this case, they faced two choices: face her and be cut down, or run and live. Most chose the latter. Those that did not were soon decorating the seabed with their bodies, the Grey Ghost not even slowing down in run north.

By now she could get an accurate bead on how many of the Shadows there were - and there were a _lot_. So like any good predator, the Grey Ghost slipped around the defenses, in her case going underwater.

Sadly, as it turned out, the Shadows had learned from the last two times she'd done that. Down below were a few dozen stringy-haired Shadows, all looking just at home underwater as the Grey Ghost, and all aiming their weapons at her.

Despite the situation, the Grey Ghost couldn't help but grin viciously. They were _still_ underestimating her. Crouching, she braced her feet against the water, still drifting forward, and _kicked_ , shooting forward like a full-speed Long Lance. The Shadows were clearly not ready for that, if their panicked flailing was anything to go by, and two died to a wide swing of her blade before any of the others could respond.

Torpedoes darted in, in numbers to walk on, and the Grey Ghost- turned off her buoyancy, immediately sinking down and letting the torpedoes speed harmlessly overhead. And, since the submarines had been surrounding her…

The grin was back as the Shadows were torn to shreds by their own weaponry. Not as satisfying as killing them herself, but it did conserve energy, and was still quite satisfying to watch. With that obstacle out of the way, the Grey Ghost pressed on. The few survivors, their tubes emptied, tried to grab on, but neck-breaking kicks and slashes of her claws took care of them.

From the frantic ripples spreading out on the surface, the Shadows were aware of the underwater massacre. The metal cylinders raining down and exploding were a clue, too. Unfortunately for them, they were pretty much blind-firing; the first real clue they had as to where she was was when she grabbed one of the Shadows - the kind with two really big arms - by the ankle and yanked it down, followed up shredding the Shadow's torso with her claws.

This process repeated three times before the Shadows scattered, and the Grey Ghost paused, trying to decide which to go after. But now that the Shadows weren't in one big amorphous blob, she could get a better idea of the types, and there was one, hiding in the largest group, that was different from the rest. It was strong, incredibly so, and a challenge to her! A challenge that would not go unanswered.

Kicking off the water again, the Grey Ghost sped up onto the surface - and was immediately met by a hail of gunfire. Several heavy shells slammed into her before she could get her flight deck up to block, but with her reinforced armor only half bit in. Ignorable, she decided. And as it turned out, that was the only salvo the Shadows got before Enterprise dug her claws into a foolishly close Shadow.

The Shadow fell into the waves, but another slammed its fist into the Grey Ghost's cheek, accompanied by more shells slamming into her. An overhead chop took care of the opponent in front of her, and a sweep of her flight deck deflected more shells. She ducked under another punch, claws flashing up to disembowel the opponent, but it did the job of allowing another Shadow to fire at her at point-blank range. The shells were bounced by her flight deck, and a follow-up pounce knocked it over, leaving its throat open for her claws.

Standing, the Grey Ghost saw that she had but one opponent left in sight - an opponent that was aiming eight barrels of death at her.

"Grr…"

The guns barked, the high-velocity shells tearing through even her own reinforced armor and knocking her off her feet into a prone position on the water.

[So, this is the famed Grey Ghost, hmm? Stay back, I shall handle this.]

That voice. Oh, how she longed to rip it out! But no, the Shadow wasn't killing her yet. That was an opportunity. And the removal of the other Shadows only worked further in her favor.

[I can see how the lesser of our kind would fear you,] the Shadow droned on from her throne-like construct. [But I am a Princess, an Installation. And you…]

The Grey Ghost felt cold metal press to her chest.

[Are nothing.]

Almost the instant the last word left the Shadow's mouth, the Grey Ghost was moving, arm lashing out and grabbing the gun barrel pressed against her. And then she _squeezed_.

Metal shrieked in protest before giving up the ghost, the gun barrel twisting into an unrecognizable lump of scrap. The Shadow, clearly stunned, barely reacted.

[Wha-]

And then the Grey Ghost was on her, sword up and the other hand biting into one of the gun turrets. The turret crumbled, but the sword skittered off the Shadow's armor, leaving only a thin red line. Growling, the Grey Ghost reconsidered her options.

[You will pay for this, you-!]

The oncoming rant was promptly derailed by the Grey Ghost punching her in the face. Then again. And again. And again. It didn't have the visceral satisfaction of using her claws, but it was still very satisfying.

~o~

"Holy shit."

All eyes turned to Northampton, who had just managed to get one of her seaplanes near the northern Abyssal group, and off the downing of the last few planes from the Abyssal airstrike that had hit them ten minutes prior. Bremerton - the cruiser, not the city - was going to need dock work after taking a torpedo, and just about everyone had some bomb damage, but otherwise they'd weathered it unscathed.

A few minutes prior they had also passed Bainbridge Island and entered the Central Basin. This had two beneficial effects. First, they could spread out and properly maneuver rather than be forced to charge down a narrow inlet. Second, everyone was afforded a long, hard look at the smoking ruins of the town of Bainbridge Island, and the smoke and sirens coming from downtown Seattle.

Suffice to say, as angry as they had been before, the entire Seventh Fleet was now thoroughly _pissed off_.

"What's going on? Is Enterprise alright?" Arizona frantically asked, joined by a general clamor from the battleships.

"Well, she's bleeding from multiple wounds, and-"

That was as far as the heavy cruiser got before literally half the fleet spun on their heels and began steaming north.

"Wait, wait!" Northampton frantically called out. "She's still afloat! And she's beating the Air Defense Princess' face in with her bare hands!"

Said ships stopped in their tracks on hearing that, all eyes turning back to the heavy cruiser again.

"If you're bullshitting just to keep us here…" West Virginia growled, letting the unspoken threat hang.

"Seriously, it's happening," Northampton snapped. "And I seriously resent the fact that you seem to think I'd-"

The clacking of a rifle and over a dozen bows drowned out the incipient argument.

"Then they're scattered and vulnerable!" Oriskany barked. "Pick a group to target and plaster it! This is no time for finesse!"

"Yes ma'am!"

"And don't hit Enterprise!"

"Get those heavy cruisers, too!" Northampton added. "They're not shooting at Enterprise now because they don't want to hit the Princess, but that's going to change the second she finishes it off!"

There were comforting nods at that, and the carrier's raised their launchers, planes soaring into the sky, and with it, the gathered shipgirls began to grasp something: they were _winning_ , a point only reinforced as Kitty Hawk's jets soared past, followed by anti-ship missiles from the destroyers, skimming over the wavetops.

"We're gonna win…" one of the destroyers breathed, her face lighting up in a sunny smile. "We're gonna win! Whoo!"

That was the catalyst for everyone else to start celebrating, save for the carriers and a small knot of cruisers.

"So…" Kitkun Bay said as she steamed up to Oriskany. "Yay. We won. Great. How are we going to retrieve Enterprise?"

"I honestly have no idea," Oriskany stated, sounding far too at peace with that fact. "I was kind of hoping someone else would have an idea."

"Well, in that case, permission to go in and mop things up?"

Salem hastily saluted as Oriskany regarded her, sisters Des Moines and Newport News, as well as light cruisers Boise, Helena, and Honolulu, behind her.

"Wait… you have a plan for getting Enterprise back?" Kitkun Bay confirmed.

"I have… maybe sixteen percent of a plan?" the heavy cruiser hedged.

The two carriers glanced between each other, and then Oriskany shrugged. "Meh, that's more of a plan than we've had all day. Permission granted. Just be aware that you'll need to get your own destroyers."

Salem blinked, and then turned around to behold every destroyer in the fleet joining in the general carousing.

"Joy…" she muttered. Then her face lit up as an idea came to her. "Can I-"

"No, you cannot just go without destroyers," Oriskany deadpanned.

"Damn."

~o~

Hands flailed at her, denting armor and breaking systems underneath but failing to find purchase, and ultimately failing to stop her. The Grey Ghost's fists continued to rain down on the hapless Shadow, and finally, she felt something give, spraying blood over her hands. Grinning, she reached in and _tugged,_ tearing the body apart.

"GROAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" she howled, announcing her victory to all that could hear.

The remaining Shadows voiced their opinion by bracketing her with shells, one slamming into her torso. Philistines.

The Grey Ghost made to hop off her rapidly sinking foothold, but a familiar drone caused her to look up, where flying things like what the Shadows used were… bombing the Shadows? Yes, they were; in fact, judging by the number of dead Shadows with the hats lying face-down on the water, they'd been doing that for a while.

The grin on her face somehow managed to grow even wider. Somehow, the idea that _others_ were joining her on the hunt was exhilarating instead of infuriating.

Her legs suddenly buckled, and now she was even more glad that her fellow hunters were here to help. She was injured, badly, worse than any time since when she'd first hunted, legs weak and torso wracked with pain. Kneeling down on the water, the Grey Ghost took deep breaths, letting her limited regeneration take hold. The wounds wouldn't close, but they did stop bleeding, and her body adapted workarounds to the damaged sections.

Finally, she stood. The last of her fellow hunters were leaving, winging back to the main group. There were still many of the Shadows, and they were regrouping. Retreat, or attack?

Trick question. Attack, of course.

Once again she dug her feet into the water, and darted forward, scattering the nascent formation like so many ninepins. Though surrounded again, the Shadows once again proved their annoying tendency to learn by _not_ firing at her. At least, not the ones to her sides. The ones still in front had a clear shot, after all.

Shells crashed into her and her flight deck, sending her staggering back. The Shadows were just about to fire again - and then shells screamed in overhead, smashing into them. The Grey Ghost didn't know who'd just bailed her out, but she took full advantage, juking left and driving her hand into the nearest Shadow.

Once again, the Grey Ghost fell into the dance of claw and blade, and she reveled in it again. The Shadows, caught in melee range, stood no chance against her strength and ferocity, and though the occasional blow and shell made its way through, none of it could stop her.

Finally, though, the last of the enemies fell to her claws, and she turned around to find all the rest gone. In their place were more of the Warm Ones, fourteen of them.

' _Hey.'_

The Grey Ghost froze, head swivelling around to find the source of the voice.

' _Oh, come on. Do we really gotta do this every time?'_

She felt… weak. Tired. Hungry, in a physical way.

' _Well, that works, too. Ugh, I'm gonna be sore in the morning…'_

She fell away…

~o~

Salem watched warily as Enterprise - no, the Abyssal that had been Enterprise - slowly turned their way. She and her task force had arrived just in time to get her out of the surround she'd been stuck in, bagging many of the distracted Abyssal cruisers in the process, and had also watched as the carrier had torn through the rest with little apparent effort and quite a lot of brutality.

Luckily, that last knot had been the last of the organized Abyssal forces, the rest dead or fleeing north as fast as they could. With Salem and the rest of her cruisers reluctant to pursue, that meant they could afford to sit back and wait - and try and think up a plan to pull back a berserk, Abyssal-fied fleet carrier.

"Oh, I really hope we don't have to fight that," she heard Nashville mutter behind her, a sentiment the heavy cruiser fully agreed with.

As the Abyssal Enterprise came closer, Salem could see the many gaping wounds riddling her body. Rather than reassure her, that only made the figure even more terrifying. If she could take that kind of punishment and still fight and win against such numbers...

Suddenly, the carrier came to a halt, head swivelling around. After a few moments, her odd helm shattered and disappeared into ether. Salem caught a glimpse of golden eyes surrounded by black and still weeping blood, and then they were back to Enterprise's normal blue, though still with the blood.

"Uh, hi guys," she said, her voice shaky, her hands held up. "Sorry to spring this on you, but, uh, I've lost a lot of blood and I think I'm about to pass out."

The carrier had barely finished before she fell forward.

"Enterprise!" Salem shouted, only for Newport News to beat her to the punch and sprint forward to catch Enterprise in her arms.

"Hoof, she's heavy!" her sister grunted. "Eurgh, and she's bleeding on me, too!"

"Suck it up, N.N. You're the one who volunteered to carry her," Salem replied. "Alright, girls, let's get back to base so we can get hot baths and ice cream and then see how much of a mess we've got on our hands."

"It's a pretty big one, for sure," one of the destroyers remarked, gazing towards the battered, smoking skyline of downtown Seattle to the south, and then to Enterprise's slumbering, bleeding form.

"Don't I know it," the heavy cruiser muttered.


	7. Chapter 7

It had been a week since the attack, and smoke still hung over downtown Seattle. For Hornet, CV-12, who had spent almost twenty years sitting in Bremerton longing to see the skyline of the city, it was a depressing sight only partially salved by the Abyssal parts her task force kept steaming past.

"Geez, this is awful," Essex muttered from behind her.

"Definitely a battleship bombardment," Princeton observed, adjusting her glasses. "If you carefully observe the damage to the-"

"Princeton, please, shut up."

The light carrier shot a glare to her larger counterpart. "Just because you do not appreciate being educated on these matters does not mean others might not find the subject of interest."

"Yeah, well-"

The bickering tuned out with the ease of long familiarity, Hornet glanced over her shoulder to the last carrier of their group, and winced.

' _In 3… 2… 1…'_

"Enterprise!" Yorktown howled to the sky, clutching at her face in blind panic. "Pleasebealrightpleasebealrightpleasebealri-"

*CLONK!*

"Ow! … Thank you, Guam."

"Don't mention it," the large cruiser replied as she stowed away the baseball bat she'd used to smack Yorktown upside the head.

Hornet sighed tiredly. That routine had gotten old after the first dozen repetitions, not to mention Essex and Princeton's bickering. Why had she agreed to lead a carrier task group, again?

Ah, right, politics, celebrity, and being actually good at it.

The extent of the damage became increasingly apparent as they steamed further south. More plumes of smoke could be seen rising from Tacoma, and as they rounded Bainbridge Island they all saw the distinct _lack_ of the town that had once been on its southern shore. Hornet's fists clenched at her sides, and the mutters from their screen indicated she wasn't the only one feeling pissed off.

Bremerton, by contrast,had only been hit by a few stray shells, though the base was a shambles. There was also a destroyer on the water in front of them, Fletcher-class from her rigging, wearing an open flight jacket over her sailor top, as well as an aviator's cap and the usual white shorts of the Fletcher class.

"Halt and identify yourself!" she barked, aiming her guns and torpedoes at them.

"Really, Stevens?" Hornet called back. "You don't recognize any of us?"

"We already have one carrier in Abyssal form on base, I don't want another, hostile one, too!" came the reply.

Palm, meet face, though before she could do anything more someone else decided to handle things.

"Dammit, Stevens!" USS Selfridge shouted as she advanced on the destroyer, who for her part took a hesitant step backwards. "There's paranoia and there's this! Now let us through!"

"Y-Yes ma'am!" Stevens yelped, hastily saluting with one hand and rubbing her ear with the other. "Follow me!"

"She usually like this?" Hornet asked as Selfridge huffed and moved back into position, the rest of the task group following the Fletcher.

"You know how it is with radar pickets," the Porter replied. "You ask 'em to be paranoid, then they're gonna get paranoid, even when you don't want 'em to be."

The base looked even worse up close, a majority of the buildings gutted or with workmen scrambling over them. The sight of the massive bulk of the Kitty Hawk was a comforting presence, at least. Oriskany stood near the waterfront, supervising the reconstruction of one of the buildings. Or, at least, checking up on it, given how she was now walking away.

"Hey, Ori!" Stevens called out as Hornet and her task group scrambled up onto the dockside concrete. "We got our reinforcements!"

The carrier glanced over, her face lighting up at the sight of Hornet and her fellow shipgirls. "Horney!" she cried out, rushing over and wrapping up the older carrier in a hug.

"Hey, Ori," Hornet chuckled, rubbing her head.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Essex muttered behind them.

"Yes, yes, it's good to see you too, Essex," Oriskany said, letting go of Hornet and rolling her eyes. She was almost immediately bowled over by a wild-eyed Yorktown.

"Where is she?! Where is E?" she demanded, her hands pressing down on the Essex's shoulders.

"She's fine, she's in the docks, resting up!" Oriskany frantically replied.

As quickly as the panic had come, it vanished, leaving a serene smile on Yorktown's face. "That's fine, then," she said, standing up and dusting off her skirt. "E's always getting banged up; I'm just glad she's not out fighting."

"Okaaaaay…" Oriskany muttered as she pulled herself to her feet.

"You get used to it," Hornet replied. "Is Admiral Richardson available? I know he's probably busy with the rebuilding, but-"

The carrier trailed off as she caught the look Oriskany's face. "Oh, don't tell me," she said, sucking in breath.

"I'm sorry, Hornet, but Admiral Richardson did not survive the attack," Oriskany said sadly.

It had taken some time, time spent getting the rest of the task group settled and finding one Rear Admiral Wilkerson, recently promoted from captaining one of the destroyers to assume command in Admiral Richardson's place, but finally Hornet and Guam had managed to get the full extent of the situation.

It wasn't good.

The largely intact status of the shipgirl force was the only good news. Only Enterprise and Pennsylvania remained in dock, the former still unconscious from her hefty injuries and the latter chomping at the bit to get back in action, her torpedo damage stubbornly slow to heal. In fact, Vestal was scheduled to try and speed things up that very day.

The base had had nearly sixty percent of its buildings damaged or destroyed; somehow, there were only 536 fatalities, largely thanks to most of the base personnel being in the mess eating breakfast when the attack started. Unfortunately, Admiral Richardson and most of his command staff were among the former number, caught by an airburst in their scramble to the command center. On top of that was the loss of the destroyer USS Halsey with all hands, a total of 323 personnel, and over two thousand injured in the base and city.

Still, as bad as the situation in Bremerton was, things were much worse at Bainbridge Island, Seattle, and Tacoma. The damage value in Seattle was north of $1 billion, with tens of thousands of casualties on a busy weekday morning. McChord Air Force Base was shut down for the foreseeable future, its aircraft so much scrap metal and its runway resembling the surface of the moon, though luckily most of the personnel had escaped. Tacoma itself, and the all-important port, had escaped major damage. Bainbridge Island had been largely levelled, and while a good chunk of its population had been at work in Seattle, the death toll was still north of ten thousand.

Overall, it was the single most devastating Abyssal attack on US soil since the Black Day.

But the gears of war stop for no one. Another convoy was ready, Japan needed the goods within the holds of the ships gathering at Tacoma - oil, liquid natural gas, grain, and a thousand other things - and most of their shipgirls were still good to go. The convoy would run.

"Dammit," Hornet groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. She, along with Oriskany, Guam, Northampton, and Admiral Wilkerson, were parked in one of the intact conference rooms. "We should've been here _months_ ago. You guys were one bad day away from complete combat ineffectiveness!"

"I'm inclined to agree," Admiral Wilkerson said. The man looked exhausted, his clothes rumpled and his face tight and wan. "But we can't turn back time. We have an operation to plan, that's going to be launched in a few _days_ , and-"

"Ah, actually, I don't think we do need to plan this," Hornet interjected. "You guys have done this how many times?"

"Thirty-four," Northampton and Oriskany chorused.

"Right, so you all know what you're doing. Just… keep doing that," Hornet said, waving her hand. "I _am_ going to change one thing up, though. My carriers won't be simply sitting to the north waiting for something to happen."

The carrier smiled, the kind of smile that reminded everyone why Hornet was the most decorated American carrier girl.

"We're going to be out front _looking_ for trouble."

~o~

 _Darkness. Fire. And death. This is what Enterprise found herself surrounded by: dark waters littered with corpses and ringed with fire._

" _Hello?" she called out. "Is anyone here?"_

 _For a moment, there was no answer, and then a dark figure pulled up out of the water. She flinched, stepping back from what was in front of her, for it was_ her _, and yet not. It had her face, her red hair, her body. But it had different eyes, yellow with black sclera, menacing, threatening. Its stance was different, hunched and crouched. Animal. It's clawed gloves were not gloves but its arms, long canines poked out of a snarling rictus, and a thick, muscular tail poked out from its lower back._

" _What are you?" Enterprise breathed as the thing did… nothing. Just stood there, tail waving._

" _She is you."_

 _The carrier turned to the voice, that of a young woman - no, a girl - with short blonde hair, dressed in sleeveless crop top and split, side-tied miniskirt, all in white, as well as a white sailor's cap._

" _And I am you, and you are you," she continued, her voice dull and sad. "We all are you. Who you were, who you are, and who you may yet be."_

 _That… was her. Yes, Enterprise could no longer deny it. That monster in front of her was her - and yet also not her, since she was not yet that monster. And if she had any say, then she would_ not _become that monster._

" _How do I avoid this?" she asked the slim girl beside her, gesturing at the monster-her._

" _I am you," she said cryptically. "I cannot know, for you do not know." She began to fade, as did the monster and the background around her. "But you must find the answer soon, for time is not on our side…"_

The landscape continued to fade around her into bright white - and then she opened her eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling.

"What…" she croaked, only for a pair of strong arms to yank her out of the dock by the neck.

"E, you're all right!" Yorktown cried, squeezing as hard as she could.

"Can't… breathe…"

"Ah!" she yelped, letting go, dropping her sister back into the dock. "Ah, sorry." Yorktown looked down into the water, head tilted quizzically. "You don't wear a swimsuit into the docks?"

Enterprise shrugged. "Three years having to bathe without them," she said. "You get used to the nudity. But… Yorkie, what are you doing here? I thought you were still posted to San Diego."

"I was, but my task group got posted up here after that big fight," she said, before reaching out and flicking her younger sister in the head. "And I heard about what you did! Don't you ever scare us like that again, you hear? Midway had to sit on Hornet to keep her from stealing a fighter jet and flying up to help."

That mental image prompted a giggle from Enterprise, which served to remove the remaining tension in the room.

Of course, once the giggles subsided, the tension returned.

"How's everyone taking it?" Enterprise asked.

"Well…" Yorktown hedged. "I can't talk to everyone here, so I could only get a vague idea of-"

"Yorkie," the redhead interrupted. "Just tell me."

Yorktown sighed, and continued. "Alright, so the Bremerton shipgirls are split into roughly thirds. A third think you're dangerous and need to be put down now, a third are worried but adopting a 'wait and see' approach, and another third think you're the coolest thing ever." A genuine smile spread over the carrier's face. "And yeah, that last third is mostly destroyers."

"That's… better than I thought," Enterprise sighed. "At least there are some shipgirls in my corner."

At the despondent look on her little sister's voice, Yorktown reached down and ruffled her hair, drawing a whine of contentment from the carrier.

"Yorkie…" she said softly. "What do _you_ think?"

"You silly goose," Yorktown scolded, the ruffling intensifying. "You're my little sister, and you sure don't look like an Abyssal. I believe you can control this."

That drew a smile out of Enterprise. "Thanks," the redhead said. "Okay, on a lighter note, who else came with you?"

"Well, for carriers there's Essex and Hornet and Princeton, then we have Alaska, Guam, New Orleans, Wichita, Miami, Biloxi, Flint, and Tucson in our screen," Yorktown rattled off. "Hornet's in charge, and she's been doing a good-"

"What?" Enterprise yelped in surprise. "Why aren't you, y'know, in command of your own task group? I mean, I get why Hornet is leading this one, but…"

"E…" Yorktown said sadly. "They offered one. I turned it down. I'm an old, tired carrier, and… and I don't think I'd be very good at leadership. Let the younger carriers have their time to shine."

The admission drew a pained wince from Enterprise. It was a familiar sentiment. Damnably familiar, in fact. Slowly, she reached up and stroked Yorktown's cheek, and the tear that had run down it. "Yorkie… maybe you aren't suited for leadership. But you're not just an old, tired carrier. Not to me. You're my big sister, and you always will be."

To her delight, a smile returned to Yorktown's face. "E… thank you," she breathed. "You're right. This war… it gets to you, y'know?"

Visions of a black-eyed monster flashed through Enterprise's head, and she had to suppress a flinch. "Yeah, I know," she said softly.

"Yeah… you would, wouldn't you?"

Both sisters fell silent, content to quietly enjoy each other's company. Finally, though, Yorktown stood and dusted herself off.

"Well, E, I have to go," she said. "The convoys are still running, and we need to cover them."

"Alright," Enterprise replied, waving goodbye. "Good luck, Yorkie. Stay safe."

Yorktown flashed her little sister a confident smile, and then left the docks, leaving Enterprise to settle back into the water.

Well, for all of five minutes before she tried to stand up out of the dock - and then froze with her neck, hips, and arms cranked at odd angles.

"Owwwww…" she groaned, collapsing back into the water. "Seriously, Yorkie, stay safe…"

~o~

"Hornet."

The carrier in question paused with one foot off the dock, and turned her head to the speaker. "Yeah?"

"Do you have a moment?" Oriskany asked. "I have something I want to ask."

Hornet grimaced. "Sorry, Ori, but we really have to-"

"Get back here!"

"Arr! Booty plundered!"

Both carriers glanced out onto the water, seeing Kidd sprinting down the Inlet with Selfridge in pursuit, the latter missing her skirt and the former carrying it.

"Never mind, I think we have a few minutes," Hornet smoothly stated. "What's up?"

"Why are you really here?" Oriskany bluntly asked. "I know that the Abyssal pressure on San Diego hasn't let up. And even if it was, I'd expect a more green task group, not one with some of our most decorated ships." She pointedly looked out at Alaska and Guam on the water. "And Alaska and Guam are… interesting choices for escorts."

"You…" Hornet began, before chuckling and shaking her head. "I told them you'd figure something was up. But yes, we're not just here to reinforce you guys for convoy ops."

Oriskany frowned at the choice of words. "Then… what are you here to reinforce us for?"

"You'll learn all the details when we get back, but… this convoy will hopefully be the last, because there's another op coming up. A big one. And we're going to be critical to its success." The carrier glanced back out to Alaska and Guam. "Or rather, those two are, and we need to get them delivered."

"I see," Oriskany lied, before jerking her head up. "Ah, Selfridge caught Kidd."

Indeed, the fuming Porter was steaming back up to the group, her skirt in place and a sullen, arms-crossed Kidd being dragged behind her by her ankle.

"Yup, that's our cue to go," Hornet agreed, hopping down onto the water. "Don't worry about what's coming up too much. And remember, if you make Leyte cry in training, that's too much."

"One time!" Oriskany snapped, throwing up her hands.

~o~

Hornet's task group was gone for a little over a week. For the most part, life went on in Bremerton, the remaining shipgirls training and resting, and Navy workmen patching up more and more of the base. Enterprise herself was released from the docks after three days, settling into a groove of her own. However, there were a few events that stood out from the comfortable routine.

Some were humorous…

~o~

"Okay, I think I've got this," Enterprise said, letting out a breath. "Are you sure you want me to test this on you?"

"Y-Yes," Iwo Jima nodded. "I-I should be able to break out i-if you mess up."

"Alright…" Enterprise breathed, pulling out a quarter. Carefully placing it on her fist, she flicked it up with her thumb. "Watch the quarter," she said as it tumbled up. "Watch very carefully…"

Iwo Jima's eyes followed the coin, steadily becoming glazed and unfocused.

The coin landed in Enterprise's palm, and she stared at Iwo Jima. "Okay, good, she's not going on a rampage or something…" she muttered. That was as far as she got before Iwo Jima's fist lashed out and smacked her right between the eyes. Thoroughly unprepared for the blow, Enterprise went down like a sack of flour, blood streaming from her forehead, and it honestly didn't make any difference. The couch that was smashed into her as a follow-up would have knocked her out anyway.

The first one to realize something was wrong was the light cruiser Pasadena, who was outside the room Enterprise and Iwo Jima had been in when the latter burst through the wall, her eyes still dull and unfocused.

"Uh, Iwo?" the light cruiser nervously queried. "Like, what are you- ACK!"

That last yelp was due to the significantly taller carrier grabbing her ankles in one hand and slinging her over her shoulder.

"Hey! Dammit, Iwo, what's, like, wrong with you?!" the light cruiser demanded, futilely banging on the carrier's shoulders with her fists. "Help! Bad touch, bad touch! I need an adult!"

"Hey, I'm an adult!" Fall River said as she walked around the nearest corner. "What d'you need help wi-"

That was as far she got before Iwo Jima grasped Pasadena around her knees, and then swung her into the Baltimore as a living club. Fall River slammed into the wall, cracking it, and was about to stand up when Iwo Jima followed up by a side kick to the face.

"Oh, my head…" Pasadena groaned as the hypnotized carrier continued on.

It was only after ten minutes, another six knocked-out shipgirls, and a monster headache that Pasadena got the idea to wrap her fists together and slam the back of Iwo Jima's head with all her might. The carrier stumbled, snorted, and shook her head.

"What in the world…?" she wondered, before twitching in surprise at the bruised destroyer in front of her. "Oh, no, I did it again."

"No shit," Pasadena groused, still hanging over her shoulder. "Would you mind, like, letting me down now?"

"Oh, sorry!"

~o~

Others were more somber…

~o~

Car after car, a mix of black hearses and fire trucks, many of the latter still sporting scorch marks from falling embers, wound its way through Seattle. In between the vehicles were thousands of people, some in black civilian clothes and others in military dress. Hundreds of thousands more lined the streets, coming from as far as Boise and San Francisco to watch the memorial service.

At the center of the procession was a flatbed truck, decorated with flowers and a tv screen slowly scrolling through the names of everyone who had died in what the media was calling the Battle of the Sound.

Enterprise sighed as she scanned the crowd, sitting among her fellow shipgirls two vehicles down from the flatbed. As much as she understood, intellectually at least, why they needed to be there, it still felt like she was being stabbed in the chest with her failures every time she saw someone sobbing on the sidewalks. The pointed stares from her fellow shipgirls didn't help, either.

"Hey!"

Her attention was drawn by a man in disheveled, stained clothing, who had jumped over the barricade.

"You fucking shipsluts!" he shouted, even as he was squashed between several policemen. "You're supposed to protect us! You're supposed to fucking protect us!"

The carrier hung her head as the man was wrestled down, unable to refute the point, and many of the girls around her were doing the same. Others, though, looked thunderous, teeth and fists clenched. And Enterprise soon realized why, as rage flooded through her. The Abyssals were at fault here, and they would pay. She would make sure of it.

"Your eyes!" Iwo Jima suddenly hissed, eyes wide.

Enterprise flinched, and began breathing in and out, in and out, her anger receding. She glanced back at Iwo Jima who nodded, and she slumped down in her seat, rubbing her forehead. Great. Now it was coming out outside of combat. And the action hadn't gone unnoticed in the car; the stares were back, and even more pointed.

Sighing, she turned back out to the crowds. Hopefully that wouldn't trigger something.

~o~

And some were just utterly bizarre…

~o~

Oriskany stared at the massive blob of foam that had engulfed the shipgirl dorm at Bremerton. The white mass was broken only by the occasional brown/grey of the underlying building facade, and a few arms sticking out. It was also dotted periodically by wide holes dug out by enterprising shipgirls.

"What in the world…" she breathed.

"It's firefighting foam," Vestal reported, stepping back with a dab of the foam on her finger. The repair ship, who had been looking merely tired the month before the recent attack, was now back to exhausted, black bags under her eyes, her face grey and her hair matted and dull. And… were those white roots? Oriskany made a mental note to get Vestal something nice for Christmas. "Luckily, we managed to dig out breathing tubes before it fully hardened."

"Okay, and how the hell do we have _this much foam_ covering the dorm?" Oriskany demanded, waving her arms at the white-clad building.

"Something must have set off the firefighting system," Vestal answered. "What, I don't know. Now, let's get some salt water to clear this away."

"Way ahead of you," Oriskany said as a quartet of destroyers ran up, their fire hoses snaking into the water. They quickly turned the hoses and began spraying the building, foam dissolving and running into the concrete.

It took hours, but the foam was slowly cleared away, though the mystery of what had triggered it only deepened. No breaches in the walls were found, no sources of fire were found, and as they got deeper and deeper into the dorm their stomachs sank. After all, the destroyer dorms were the deepest in the dorm.

Finally, though, they got to Fletcher's room, digging out a hole - and revealing a heating block and two metal canisters, one with a label for compressed oxygen and the other with a label for _elemental fluorine._

Both Oriskany and Vestal were struck dumb by what they were seeing, especially when their brains connected the dots.

"Uh, hi?" Fletcher nervously greeted them, still stuck up to her waist in foam. "Could you guys dig me out?"

" _WHY IN THE FUCK WERE YOU TRYING TO MAKE_ FOOF?!" both shipgirls demanded.

~o~

And those were just the incidents Enterprise was present for. There had also been several destroyer-led kitchen disasters, one of the submarines getting arrested on indecent exposure charges, and Macon getting into a fistfight with a bear. And lest she think it was solely due to the mix of personnel in Bremerton, Arizona had deflated that hope by going over some of the more notorious incidents that had happened in San Diego, Portsmouth, Wilhelmshaven, and most especially Yokosuka.

Shipgirls were crazy. That was a self-evident fact.

And with the memorial service her only incident with the Grey Ghost, the attitudes of her fellow shipgirls softened considerably. Wary hostility had cooled into wary acceptance, and no more was everyone else sending her nervous glances. It helped that most of the base was still deployed on the convoy run, and Enterprise could only hope that their attitudes had softened during the trip.

In any case, the week-plus passed by in relative serenity punctuated by periods of frantic scrambling, but that routine was quickly broken up when Hornet, West Virginia, and the rest of the convoy escorts returned, safe and sound. That set the base into an anthill, sailors and shipgirls alike scrambling around in frantic preparation.

Luckily, no one was kept in suspense for long. Admiral Wilkerson, now bumped up a star, called every shipgirl in Bremerton into one of the big briefing rooms and said three words that stopped all conversation in its tracks.

"We're attacking Hawaii."

Silence met the proclamation, silence that held for several seconds before erupting into one continuous exclamation of "WHAT?!"

"I thought that's what it was," Oriskany nodded.

"You knew?!" Kitkun Bay and Enterprise demanded.

"Well, I had help from Hornet," she replied.

"You knew?!" Yorktown, Princeton, and Essex demanded.

"I'm the flagship, of course I knew," she scoffed. "Alaska and Guam knew, too."

"Yo," the latter waved.

"If I could have some quiet!" Admiral Wilkerson interrupted. "Thank you. We are assaulting Hawaii in two weeks' time. Our objective: to kill the Airfield Empress."

Tapping the tablet in his hand, a map of the Pacific Ocean popped up on the screen at the front of the room.

"The JMSDF and the Third Fleet will be occupying the Abyssals' attention," Admiral Wilkerson explained, a stars and stripes and a meatball flag popping up on arrows pointing at Hawaii Island and Midway Island. "We are unsure exactly what forces the Abyssals have based in Hawaii, but they are considerable, both in aviation and mobile forces." The map zoomed in on Oahu, three black dots popping up on screen. "The main threat to those forces will be coming from these three Airfield Princesses; as such, the carriers will be loaded primarily for anti-air. In addition to the fleet units, submarines will be deploying to the mouth of Pearl Harbor. Their mission is to slow deployment of Abyssal mobile forces, report back when they do break through, and attrite, in that order. Ideally, the JMSDF and Third Fleet will be able to defeat the Abyssal mobile forces, but more likely both will be neutralized."

Zooming out, Admiral Wilkerson tapped the waters north of the Hawaiian Archipelago. "This is where we come in," he continued, another stars and stripes arrow popping up aimed at Oahu. "Our mission is to escort Alaska and Guam-" Here he nodded at the two large cruisers sitting up by the carriers. "Into gun range of the Empress in Pearl Harbor. Salem, your task force will be accompanying her. Your rapid-fire abilities could make the difference."

"Hornet, Oriskany, Pennsylvania, your forces will be keeping the Abyssals off the strike force. Load up for air defense, and leave surface forces to the battleships."

"Admiral?" Kitkun Bay piped up. "What about us?"

"You're staying behind," he replied, drawing aggravated groans from the gathered DEs and escort carriers. "Don't give me that, you'd slow down the formation and we don't expect much trouble from submarines."

"You should, given how many we've been killing," the destroyer escort USS George grumbled.

"In any case," Admiral Wilkerson continued after a moment of no objections. Another screen was pulled up, this time a table. "These should be your aircraft loudouts for this mission…"

By the end of the briefing, Enterprise's head was spinning. So much information, but it could indeed be distilled down to one order: keep the Abyssals off of the backs of Guam's task group, and stay alive. But it was also spinning with one more fact: if this worked, then they could clear the Pacific of Abyssals. Forever.

It was a heady thought, and also a scary one. Yes, there was still the Abyssals in the North Atlantic, but… what would shipgirls do in peace, especially one with her issues?

~o~

Admiral Holloway looked over the report Medusa had dropped on his desk, and then placed it down, leaning back and rubbing his face, a tired sigh escaping his lips.

"So, it works," he said to the repair ship in front of him.

"It works on non-sapient PT boats," Medusa corrected. "I'm sure I don't need to tell you that we have no idea what the effects on a sapient mind would be. But with the upcoming operation, I have a feeling we're going to find out."

Another sigh escaped from the Admiral's lips. Though the world's navies had been careful to preserve their shipgirls above all else, and as they gained experience that got easier and easier, the fall of Britain had shoved the mortality of shipgirls home once again. And the risks only increased with the size of the operation, simply due to the law of averages. Already, there had been some serious close calls in the operations against Singapore and Malta.

And with the Abyssals' nigh-endless ability to replenish their losses, they needed a way to replace irreplaceable shipgirls, especially if they were going to start suffering more losses.

"Yeah, I know," Holloway replied. "Alright, if it's ready for full-scale testing, keep it on standby just in case."

"Yes sir."


	8. Chapter 8

Out on the Pacific Ocean, over six hundred miles west of Hawaii, the sun shone on the surface, dotted with nearly a hundred figures spread out over several hundred square miles of ocean. Fluffy white cumulus dotted the bright blue sky at regular intervals, and a minor rain squall could be seen in the distance.

Zuikaku took a deep breath from her nose and then released it in a contented sigh. A gorgeous day for flying, though that would apply to their opponents as well. Grouped up with her in a rough diamond formation was her sister Shokaku, fellow fleet carrier Taiho, and light carriers Ryujo, Zuiho, and Shoho. Battleships Haruna and Kirishima flanked the carrier group as part of an inner ring that also included heavy cruisers Tone, Chikuma, Maya, and Chokai, and finally two more light cruisers and fourteen destroyers formed an outer ring, two of the Akizuki class forward deployed as radar pickets completing the task group.

The task group, to borrow American terminology, was one of three deployed by the Japanese in support of the Hawaiian operation. Akagi led another carrier task group of similar strength roughly sixty miles to the south, and both carrier groups were loaded for bear with fighters. The main threat was aircraft; surface ships would be handled by Nagato's battleship group, sixty miles ahead of the carriers. And, of course, there were the various auxiliaries, oilers, ammunition ships, and repair ship Akashi, scattered throughout the fleet.

In any case, the fleet carrier was broken out of her thoughts by Taiho raising her hand to her ear. The armored carrier, recently refitted with brand-new communications gear, was the relay point for inter-fleet communications.

"Understood," the armored carrier nodded. "Zuikaku, Yamato has reported that the first strike is inbound."

Nodding, Zuikaku raised her bow. "Alright, everyone, you know what to do!" she called out.

Four more bows were raised in answer, as well as a paper scroll, arrows transforming into A7M Reppu and A6M Zero fighters that immediately clawed for altitude. In the distance, Zuikaku could see the distant flashes of antiaircraft fire as the first wave sped over the battleships and heavy cruisers that formed the battle force in front of them.

Still, the carriers didn't stop. More and more fighters were sent aloft, some orbiting above the carriers and other speeding out towards the approaching Abyssal strikers, until finally the hangers were empty of aircraft aside from a few reserve fighters and the small number of torpedo and dive bombers they were carrying. Fairies scrambled within them to empty avgas lines, secure the magazines, and man antiaircraft guns, and their escorts maneuvered for maximum AA coverage.

Aside from those few reserves, all of the task group's fighters were aloft and already vectoring in when gunfire sounded out from Niizuki's picket position, and the Japanese fighters slammed into the Abyssal strike in a massive furball. Aircraft immediately began to drop, both shadowy Abyssal and silvery Japanese, though much more of the former than the latter. A few Abyssal bombers penetrated deep enough to make attack runs, only to be downed by anti-aircraft fire with only one dropped and easily dodged torpedo for their trouble. In all, only a bare handful of Abyssal fighters survived to retreat back to Oahu.

"Look alive, everyone!" Zuikaku barked as the carriers retrieved their fighters for rearming and refueling. "That was just the first wave! There'll be another one soon enough! I want the first fighters back aloft in fifteen minutes!"

"Can I just say how much I love these fucking Bofors?" Chokai cut in, waving around part of her rigging with a quad 40mm mount prominently displayed. "Because seriously, these things are great!"

"Can the chatter!" Kirishima barked, the light glinting off her glasses.

"Fine…"

~o~

Thousands of miles to the east, the sky was much less pretty. Grey stratus clouds sat fat and sullen over the sky, occasionally dropping rain upon the ocean, and a brisk wind was kicking up whitecaps.

Of course, for Iowa, the sky wasn't particularly interesting; at least, not the meteorological side of things. No, her attention was on the wild furball going on not ten miles from her, and she gave a low whistle as a dozen Abyssal bombers all dropped in the same second.

"Wow, that's a lot of bombers!" she said. "I'm glad the carriers are shooting them down, because that's a lot of bombers! With torpedoes and stuff!"

"I'm with ya, sister," New Jersey concurred, shadowing her eyes for a better look. "Hell, that might be enough to break through even _our_ AA."

The two battleships were silent for a second, then glanced at each other and chuckled. "Nah," they said in unison.

Further down the line, Wisconsin held up her phone, recording the aerial combat. Well, at least until something smacked her upside the head.

"Ow!" she yelped, turning around and rubbing the afflicted spot. "Mo, what the hell?!"

"We are in _battle_ , Wisconsin!" her older sister snapped. "You must stay vigilant, lest something sneak up on you!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Wisconsin muttered, pulling her phone up again and leaving Missouri fuming impotently.

"I missed this," Indiana sighed fondly from further down the line.

"Really?" Alabama drawled.

"Yup!" Indiana chirped. "It's like the world's best variety show!"

The battle line fell silent, though, as all of their radars suddenly began pinging surface contacts. Seconds later, the destroyer Maury sprinted over the horizon at thirty-nine knots.

" _I've got four Ru-class and six Ta-class on my tail!"_ she reported. " _Have fun, girls!"_

"Seriously, where does that tin can get off on calling us 'girls'," New Jersey muttered, indicating her chest. "Do we look like 'girls'?"

Iowa giggled at the action, even as she ran her guns out. "Ah, lighten up, sis," she said airily. "We've got a fight to enjoy!"

"Yeah, can't argue with that," New Jersey replied after a moment of silence.

Indeed, up and down the ten-ship battle line the battleships shut up, grimly starting to calculate firing solutions and elevating their guns for long-range fire. As the Abyssal battleships crossed the 30,000-yard mark, they began to fire, but the American battleships didn't flinch as the shells landed well away from the battle line. By 28,000 yards, every battleship on the line had a firing solution.

At 25,000 yards, the Abyssal shells starting to get uncomfortably close, Washington raised her hand and dropped it.

"Fire!"

Ninety 16" guns roared as one, shells streaking for the ragged column the Abyssals were advancing in. Time seemed to stop during the flight time, and then the shells smashed into the front of the Abyssal column, throwing up massive gouts of water with a roar apparent from the rearmost carrier group, nearly 150 miles distant.

The battleships didn't wait for the water to clear, cycling their guns and sending another salvo out. As the shells flew, they got a glimpse of the lead Abyssal - or rather, the shattered ruin that was once an Abyssal - sink under the waves.

Fifteen minutes later, the battleships checked fire, the last Ta sprinting as fast as it could in the other direction and leaving behind its dead comrades and both of its arms. Feelings among the Americans were mixed.

"Oh, hey, they're gone," South Dakota noted.

"That was really easy…" Iowa noted, before jerking in realization. "Ah! They sent a bunch of scrubs at us!"

"Bastards!" New Jersey added.

"I wouldn't worry about that, you two," Missouri said grimly. "There will be more where they came from." She adjusted her glasses and glanced pointedly up at the furball that had developed overhead while they were busy shooting up Abyssal battleships. "Much, much more."

~o~

Enterprise nervously fingered her crossbow, still strapped to her rigging. So far, the plan was going well. The Third Fleet and JMSDF had quite thoroughly embroiled the Abyssal forces in and around Hawaii in a colossal naval battle the likes of which the world had, quite literally, never seen. Over three thousand allied aircraft tangled with Abyssal forces that somehow _outnumbered_ them, and the thunder of heavy naval rifles was near-continuous, even from their position.

The upshot of it was that, aside from a few hapless submarines quickly depth-charged and Hedgehog'd into oblivion, Enterprise and her fellow shipgirls hadn't seen a single Abyssal. Everyone knew it wouldn't last; sooner or later (and probably sooner), the Abyssals would think to look north, or the heavy fleets would start running low on aircraft and munitions. Either way, they'd need to stay alive and protect the bombardment force until the latter were in position to make their run.

"Dammit."

All attention turned to Essex, who'd just cursed. "What happened?" Hornet asked.

"My planes just splashed a snooper," the carrier replied. "It doubt it spotted us, but now they know there are carriers up north."

The two flagships nodded. "Alright, everyone, CAP up!" Oriskany barked.

The carriers drew their bows and launched fighters, Hellcats and Corsairs soaring into the sky. Only a few, for now. They need to conserve avgas and crew health.

As such, they were almost caught off-guard by the 200-plane strike that Stevens barely caught in time.

"How the hell did they find us?!" Iwo Jima demanded as the carriers scrambled to launch more fighters.

"Don't know, don't care, worry about it if we're still alive!" Enterprise snapped, emptying her magazine.

The next twenty minutes were both thrilling and terrifying, the entire task force carefully pirouetting through a relatively small box of sea, anti-aircraft guns firing as fast as their fairy gunners could load them and trying very hard not to shoot the fighters dueling overhead, some of the dogfights swooping down to mast level. Finally, though, a shredded Abyssal flight limped away, and the CAP came back in for a landing, albeit chewed up and missing twenty-three of their number, their pilots being fished out of the sea by a few of the destroyers.

"Damage report!" Hornet barked even before the first fighters landed for refueling and rearming.

" _Pennsylvania here,"_ came the report from the battle line. " _We took a few bomb hits, but we're still 100% operational. They mostly ignored us."_

" _A close call with a few torpedoes, but that's it,"_ Guam added. " _They didn't seem very concerned about us, either."_

Hornet glanced around the task force she was the center of.

"Rocket to the flight deck, should have it patched up within the hour," Princeton reported, her fairies clambering over the wood strapped to her arm.

"Gimme ten minutes to get the shrapnel out of Kidd's face!" came the voice of Nicholas from the outer destroyer ring.

"Hey, don't do that! I want some badass scars to- YEOW!"

"Alright, seems we're still good to go," Hornet sighed in relief - before glaring at her fellow carriers. "Well? I want that CAP back up ten minutes ago!"

~o~

"Well, that escalated quickly…" Hornet muttered.

"Stand still!" Atlanta snapped as her fire hoses, as well as that of both Houstons, doused water over a burning Franklin.

"But it burns…!" the carrier wailed, dancing in place and batting at the flames.

"Then stay still so we can douse the fires, dammit!"

"And things were going so well, too," the Yorktown muttered, turning away from the scene. Their chunk of the third wave of Abyssal bombers had been beaten off with hefty casualties to the attackers, but there had been more leakers than the last two attacks. One had been a dive bomber that had nailed Franklin square on the flight deck with a 1000-lb bomb, accompanied by four 5" rockets. The bomb had left behind a big hole, naturally, but the rockets must have been loaded with incendiaries, because they had started a much stronger fire than regular high explosives could have.

And from the chatter Intrepid seemed to be getting, judging by the hand over her ear and the concerned look on her face, this had been repeated all up and down the fleet.

"Make way, make way!"

Hornet turned towards the voice to see the EOD-suit-clad USS Vesuvius steaming up to them, reaching Franklin just as the cruisers around her doused the last of the fire. The ammunition ship examined the carrier's rigging with a thoughtful hum, then reached into the hole in the flight deck and rummaged around.

"Ah, bad touch, bad touch!" Franklin yelped as Vesuvius continued to poke around, her arm entering the hole up to her shoulder. Several shipgirls watching were turning away with bright red blushes on their faces, and only the usual train wreck fascination kept Hornet from doing the same.

"Yup, definitely going to be unloading all this ammo," Vesuvius finally said, withdrawing her arm to everyone's relief. "Dewey! Dale!"

"Yes ma'am!"

With a start, Hornet realized she hadn't noticed the two destroyers trailing the ammo ship.

"Franklin is going to need to come back with us," Vesuvius continued, patting the carrier on her back. "At least, once I finish up offloading and distributing her ammo."

"B-But… I can still fight!" Franklin protested, her eyes wide.

"Franklin, thirty seconds ago you had an ammo ship with her arm up to her shoulder in your internals," Cowpens deadpanned. "I'm pretty sure this is a Maxim 3 situation."

 _That_ finally got the carrier to shut up and cooperate, and somehow, within fifteen minutes, Hornet had full magazines of 20mm ammo and some spare torpedoes for her magazines, with extra stocks of all her other weaponry that nonetheless didn't quite fill their magazines. Not to mention plenty of extra fighters offloaded from the battered Essex. That done, Vesuvius, Franklin, and their two escorts turned and began limping away, and not a moment too soon, for they had barely hit the horizon when the radar pickets picked up an incoming fourth wave.

And yet, even with the incoming attack and the potent reminder of her own mortality, as Hornet raised her bow to send more fighters aloft, she didn't feel afraid.

"I'm not going to fail," she muttered under breath. "I'm not going to fall! You hear me? Not this time!"

"That's the spirit!" Intrepid laughed beside her. "C'mon, you bastards! Do your worst!"

~o~

Far from the aerial and surface battles engulfing the Abyssal and shipgirl forces to the east and west, a different sort of battle was taking place at the mouth of Pearl Harbor. American and Japanese submarines had flooded the sea, most taking up position at a variety of distances from the mouth, and others even venturing into the harbor itself, all to bag a kill, from the lightest destroyers all the way up to carriers and battleships.

Halibut was not one of those girls. Instead, equipped with new sonar and radar, she was one of several submarines tasked with simply watching the battle, and alerting the Admiralty when the Abyssals broke through the submarine blockade.

Because they would break through. The deployment itself had caught the Abyssals off guard, and the submarines, Harder in particular, had ravaged the Abyssals' already-poor ASW forces. The Abyssals might be endless, but _experienced_ Abyssals were not. Still, the submarines were packed like sardines in a rather compact spot of ocean, and the Abyssals had no shortage of destroyers. They would break through, sooner or later.

The question was how painful it would be.

And, for the moment, it was looking pretty goddamn painful.

Orders had been to prioritize carriers, for humanity's own carriers were expected to have badly depleted airgroups by the time of breakthrough after contending with multiple Airfield Princesses. That had been carried out, the corpses of seven Wo-class carriers and just as many light carriers decorated the seabed. Harder's group of specially-trained anti-destroyer subs had ravaged the Abyssal screen, opening up the force to other attacks. And while the toll on carriers and destroyers had been the worst, the cruisers and battleships were taking casualties, too.

Halibut nodded approvingly as one of those battleships, a fast Ta-class, was ganged up on by Darter and Cavala pressing in in close proximity, and thus not noticing I-19, better known as Iku or "The Lewdmarine", lining up a shot. It was a scene she had seen over and over, just with different actors.

Of course, no blockade was perfect, and in this case that truism took form of a steady stream of Abyssal battleships slipping out to go attack their American and Japanese counterparts.

"Halibut to Task Force 34," she spoke into her radio. "Seven Re-class, inbound to your position."

" _Roger that, Halibut,"_ Washington said in reply. " _We've got a surprise waiting for them."_

Nodding, Halibut turned back to her observations - and her eyes widened as she spotted ten Ru-class battleships skirting the Oahu coast, blending in so well with the shoreline that she'd almost missed them.

More importantly, they were heading north.

"Pennsylvania, this is Halibut," she broadcasted.

~o~

" _We've got company."_

"Yeah, I know," Hornet said, her mouth a tight line. "Fall River spotted it with one of her Seahawks."

'It' being a force of ten Ru-class battleships charging up to meet them. Clearly, after two waves of bombers had failed to deter them, the Abyssals wanted to try something else.

"Can you hold them off?" Hornet continued.

" _Of course we can! Who the hell do you think you're talking to?"_ West Virginia demanded, ignoring Pennsylvania's angry sputters. "' _Course, if you want us to do anything else, like keep up with you guys, that's probably not going to happen."_

"I thought as much," the Essex sighed. "We could split our force and-"

" _I appreciate the thought, Hornet, but we both know that would be a terrible idea,"_ the battleship interrupted. " _We'll be fine. The Abyssals won't consider us important enough to give the attention of a proper air attack, especially with those battleships in front of us. Probably."_

Hornet sighed at the hint of bitterness in West Virginia's tone, and the fact that they were relying on 'maybes' at all, but shelved both in the back of her mind. They could worry about the bitterness if they were all alive after this. "Alright," she said. "I don't like it…"

" _But it's the only thing we can do,"_ West Virginia finished for her. " _Now get outta here! Use that speed of yours!"_

And with that, the battleship clicked off, and Hornet watched as the distant battle line sheered off on an intercept course for the oncoming Abyssals. Sighing tiredly, she raised her hand to her ear.

"Task force is to increase speed to twenty-five knots," she ordered. As they had been cruising at fifteen, that was a major increase. A few glances were sent her way from the other carriers, but everyone could see and grasp what the battleships were doing. No questions came, and Hornet was quite grateful for that.

Of course, that didn't mean there was no response at all. She felt more than saw Enterprise slowly drift up next to her, close enough to put her hand on her shoulder.

"Don't worry," the carrier said. "They're tougher than you think." The redhead gained a faraway look. "Much tougher…"

It helped, just a little, but as the carriers sped away from the impending clash, she couldn't help but think they were leaving the battleships to die. The Abyssal strike that spotted by Stevens shortly thereafter was almost a welcome reprieve.

The thunder of their guns shortly after the aerial attack helped, too.

~o~

"GAH!"

"Musashi!" Nagato shouted as the salvo kicked up fountains of water around the battleship.

"I, Musashi, am all right!" she announced a heart-stopping moment later. And indeed, aside from a few more scorch marks on her midsection she was indeed still functional.

Considering they were facing twice their number in faster Ta-class battleships, that was a very good thing.

Correction, almost twice their number in Ta-class battleships. One had just taken several torpedoes up the ass, judging from the gouts of water. Nagato watched with one eye as the cruisers and destroyers that had made the attack some time earlier came back, and winced when she saw Kumano being supported by Mogami.

That was the third of their heavy cruisers that had come back half-wrecked, and that led Nagato to an inescapable conclusion: they were running out of cruisers, and thus running out of torpedo attacks.

"Get her over here!" Akashi barked in the distance, cranes swinging out to snag the stricken heavy cruiser and fairies swarming out of her rigging to run diagnostics. Nagato followed the work with one eye; the Abyssals had apparently taken the sudden torpedo attack as a sign to back off a bit, for which she was grateful, but 'backing off' still meant they were shooting at them. Just… not as often.

Still, it was enough for her to observe Akashi's work, and so she saw the repair ship shake her head after her diagnosis. Kumano nodded only somewhat glumly, and then began to limp to relative safety just behind the battle line, where Nachi and Mikuma, both in a similar state, were already waiting.

That was a disaster waiting to happen, but there wasn't really anywhere safe to send them, and keeping them close by at least kept the submarines and aircraft away. Gritting her teeth, Nagato refocused her attention on the ongoing firefight, and internally gave a cheer when several of her 16" shells hit home, the fire from the targeted Ta-class slackening noticeably.

That cheer threatened to break free when _more_ torpedo hits threw up water, this time around nearly all of the battleships. Nagato eyed their opponents: though only a few Ta-class were actually sinking, quite a few were damaged their somewhat ragged battle line had become very ragged, with some quite obvious holes.

"Battleships, with me!" Nagato shouted, swinging out of the line and charging directly at the Abyssals, guns still firing. To her relief, Mutsu followed close behind, and it only took seconds before Yamato and Musashi followed.

Disorganized, demoralized, all damaged, and with the shorter range now enhancing the Japanese battleships' accuracy and hitting power, the remaining Tas don't last long.

"I, Yamato, am quite glad that is done," the battleship in question stated, groaning as she pressed against her lower back. "Sister, would you happen to know any good chiropractors?"

"A few," Musashi replied, examining a hole in her side leaking oil. "Not sure if anyone of them would be able to handle shipgirls."

"Hi, Iku-chan!"

Nagato tuned out the Yamato sisters in favor of turning towards the submarine I-19, who had just surfaced near them looking unusually grim.

"Hey, Mutsu," the submarine said, and now Nagato's eyebrows threatened to climb into her brow. Iku never passed up an opportunity to give a lewd comment to her sister (which, much to her consternation, was mostly because Mutsu seemed to like them). Whatever she had to say couldn't be good.

"The Abyssals finally managed to force us away from Pearl Harbor," she continued. "Patch up as best you can, because we've got every goddamn Abyssal in the Pacific heading towards one of the fleets."

"And why didn't we hear about this over the radio network?" Nagato demanded.

"The Abyssals jammed us to hell and back," Iku answered. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go grab some more torpedoes and then see if I can get any more potshots in."

And with that, the submarine dipped below the surface again.

Well. That was indeed not good. Nagato, Mutsu, Yamato, and Musashi glanced at one another, and the array of wounds they had taken, and they all paled as one.

"AKASHI!" the four battleships shouted as they scrambled to get to the repair ship and get that damaged patched up.

~o~

"Dammit, not now!"

Enterprise hunched over, clutching her eye as the Grey Ghost roared within her. The fifth air attack of the day had hit not fifteen minutes prior, and after the attrition of the last four waves they lacked the fighter strength to properly stop it. Anti-aircraft fire had limited the damage, but only Hornet had come out unscathed. Thankfully, most of the damage was minor thus far.

The two bombs and the torpedo that hit Yorktown did not qualify as 'minor'. And there were still Abyssal aircraft, nine dive bombers, zooming in.

Gritting her teeth, Enterprise mentally shoved her darker self aside and lifted her flight deck, 3" guns chattering. The dive bombers disintegrated, and then Enterprise was sprinting towards her stricken sister.

"Yorkie, are you alright?" she cried, grabbing on to support Yorktown as she stumbled.

"I've been better," the carrier groaned through gritted teeth. "But I'll survive, and I can still launch aircraft." As if on cue, a fairy popped its head out of Yorktown's leg wound, shooting a thumbs up.

"Not with that leg you aren't!" Enterprise snapped, gesturing down at the mangled limb. The fairy drooped, looking sad. "I mean, uh…"

Before Yorktown could continue the argument, the droning of propellers caught their attention. All eyes in the task force looked up to see a veritable cloud of Abyssal aircraft flying towards them. Their CAP was down for refueling and rearming. Evasive maneuvers had broken up the AA formation.

"Damn it!" Enterprise roared.

And then, the sound of rockets dopplering towards them all the while, a white streak flew into the formation and exploded, downing a dozen Abyssals and sending the rest into wild gyrations. That white streak was followed by another, and then another, until the entire Abyssal strike was melting under the missile fire, for that's what it had to be.

"How…" Yorktown breathed. "The Abyssals are resistant to conventional detection! How are they targeting…"

She trailed off, glancing over at Oriskany, who was looking decidedly smug.

"The EKA-3 Skywarrior is a delightful airplane," the carrier stated, answering the unspoken question. "Especially when you modify it to act as a hub for SAM targeting. And then, once it's close enough, the SM-6 can handle itself just fine." Oriskany's smug grin grew, if anything, even wider. "It's also handy for surface targets. Like the four Ta-class gunning for us.

Explosions sounded out in the distance. A lot of explosions.

" _Holy shit!"_ Stevens said a few minutes later. " _Be right back, I've got Abyssals to finish off! Holy fuck that was a lot of missiles!"_

Enterprise and Yorktown glanced between each other, and shivered in unison. "Modern warfare is scary," the latter stated.

Nodding, Enterprise drifted back to her spot in the task force, shooting periodic glances back at her sister. Yorktown quickly built back up to fifteen knots, but it was painfully clear that that was all she could do. Sadly, she could still launch aircraft, that part she hadn't lied about, and given the near-continuous air attacks, they needed her planes.

And so Enterprise gritted her teeth, shoved the Grey Ghost back down again, and began launching fighters, blessing whoever had had the foresight to provide the carriers with spare pilots.

~o~

Admiral Goto stared down at the battle plot of the command center in Yokosuka, taking in the situation. Officers from ensigns to captains bustled around him, directing auxiliary forces, submarines, and land-based air. The situation had deteriorated dramatically since the Abyssals had forced their submarines away from the mouth to Pearl Harbor. Before, casualties had been confined to a few minor hits, spread across all ship types, and quite a few banged-up submarines. Now, though, the Third Fleet was at half strength, and the Combined Fleet was only nominally at full strength because they _couldn't_ rotate out damaged shipgirls like the Americans.

Despite this, the plan was still going well. The Seventh Fleet had encountered far less opposition than the two main forces, and aside from heavy damage to Yorktown, was still entirely intact. Abyssal aerial attacks were starting to slacken off, indicating that even their nigh-endless reserves were being depleted, giving their own forces a respite. And the Americans still had a surprise in store for the many Installation-type Abyssals on Oahu. They were still on track to mutual destruction/disability of each other's mobile forces, something they had hoped wouldn't happen but expected anyway.

As Goto watched the plot, the 'surprise' the Americans were talking about was revealed as a line of B-52 silhouettes popped up on the screen, moving over the ocean towards Oahu. Of course, it wasn't just B-52s, B-1s and B-2s were undoubtedly well-represented, but the important thing wasn't the planes but what they were carrying: cruise missiles. Lots and lots of cruise missiles.

After only a few minutes, the bombers loosed their missiles and turned back for North America. Admiral Goto waited, tensed, as the missile screamed in, then hit, and let a grim smile spread over his face as all four of the dots representing the Airfield Princesses on Oahu (and hadn't that fourth one been a nasty surprise!) flashed red, one outright flashing black.

' _Yes,'_ he thought to himself. ' _As surprises go, that was a pretty good one.'_

The men and women in the command center were more effusive.

"Yes!"

"Scratch one Airfield Princess!"

"Giiiiit dunked on!"

Admiral Goto let the jubilant cries wash over him, and it felt good. But all too soon, he spotted something on the plot. Frowning, he leaned in closer, and his eyes widened as he realized what was going on.

"Shit!" he swore, the word getting the attention of just about everyone. "Get me on the line with Hornet, now!"

Immediately one of the communications techs ushered him over to the communications side of things, dialing up the line to the carrier. "Sir…?" one of the commanders asked hesitantly as the connection was made.

"You'll see," Goto said grimly. "Hornet."

" _Admiral Goto?"_ the carrier asked, sounding confused. " _What are you…?"_

"Hornet, there's no time," Goto interrupted. "You've got a large mass of Abyssals heading your way from the north."

" _North?"_ Hornet parroted. " _Oh, sonnuva-! That new Northern Ocean Princess! Dammit, that battle in the Sound was supposed to have depleted her forces!"_

"Apparently not," Goto growled. "You need to _speed up_ , you're only going at-"

" _That means leaving Yorktown behind,"_ Hornet cut in, her voice hard. " _And that's not going to happen. The bigger problem is the battle line. They're tied up about sixty miles behind us with an Abyssal battle fleet."_

The pit in his stomach that usually formed during battles deepened into a massive crater. "All the more imperative that you finish this quickly, then," Goto said, his voice tight. He considered things again, and then sighed. "If need be, abort the mission."

Hornet was silent for a long moment before she responded. " _Understood,"_ was the terse reply.

As the carrier cut the line, Goto hung his head in his hands. In his mind, he cursed the kami and God and anyone else who might be responsible for this disaster, and then stood up and returned to the battle plot. He had a duty to his shipgirls, and right now that duty demanded he properly withdraw them from the battlefield.

Hornet and her shipgirls would have to do this alone.

~o~

[Yo, Princess, we've got battleship girls up ahead. And… yeah, they're winning. Slowly, but they're winning. I know they're not the ones ya really wanna get, but…]

[Princess, we need to drive them off, if only to leave our path of advance and retreat clear.]

[Mou… but I wanna get at those carriers!]

[Heh. Give me and the girls ten minutes, and we'll have those battleship running like their pants are on fire.]

[Judging from the state of their damage… I would say that that is a fairly accurate estimate, Princess. Besides, those carriers will still be there.]

[... You promise? You promise that's all it'll take?]

[Eh, give or take a few minutes, but yeah.]

[Then go beat them up!]

[Fuck yeah. Time to-]

*BONK!*

[Don't swear in front of the Princess!]

[Alright, alright. Be back soon!]


	9. Chapter 9

"Hornet?"

The carrier in question sighed, and turned away from where she had been looking north while talking to Admiral Goto. "How close are we to the handoff point?" she asked.

The carriers around her exchanged confused looks, but Guam just frowned in thought.

"About thirty miles," she answered. "Why?"

"One moment," Hornet replied, putting her hand up to her ear. "Pennsylvania, status?"

" _Just mopping up the last of these battleships,"_ the battleship replied. " _We've all got damage, but- SHIT!"_

Gunfire erupted over the radio connection, accompanied by screams in familiar voices and a cackling laugh that sent chills up and down Hornet's spine.

"Re-class," she growled. The carrier mentally ran the distances and speeds in her head. It was not a favorable number she arrived at. And Goto wouldn't have been so concerned about this bunch if he and Admiral Holloway had any forces to spare to help. Hornet glanced over at Yorktown, still straining to keep up with the task force's fifteen-knot speed. If they could speed up, they could evade the Abyssals almost indefinitely. Probably.

" _Hornet."_

Her hand flashed up again to her ear. "Penns- wait, no. California?"

" _Yeah,"_ the battleship replied, her voice strained. " _Pennsylvania's out. So's West Virginia, Tennessee, and Mississippi. We barely got away from those Res, and if they had bothered to actually pursue us, we'd all be dead."_

"So you're running away in the opposite direction as fast as you can," Hornet finished, sighing.

" _Well…"_

"Don't worry, I'm not mad," she assured her. "It just… complicates things. You girls keep yourselves alive, okay?"

" _That I can agree with. California out."_

Hornet heard the radio click off, and she turned back to the task force, who were all looking expectantly at her.

"The new Northern Ocean Princess seems to have a beef with us," she announced, not wasting any time. "She's heading down with every Abyssal she has, and she's already driven off our battle line. So we have a choice: we can stick it out, finish the mission, and probably all die, or we can abort. I'm… open to other ideas, though."

Nobody answered in favor of stunned gaping. For a long time, the only sound was that of the waves and wind. And then Yorktown hung her head, fists clenched at her side.

"It's me, isn't it," she quietly stated more than asked, glancing down at her mangled leg. "I'm slowing everyone down. I-If I was at full speed, we wouldn't be in this position, would we?"

The other carriers flinched and looked away, even Hornet unwilling to answer. "Yorkie…" Enterprise said, her voice plaintive and her hand reaching out.

"No, we wouldn't be."

"Ori!" Hornet hissed at her sister.

"I refuse to dance around the truth, Horney," Oriskany snapped back. "If it weren't for Yorktown, we'd be able to make twenty-five, or even thirty knots. But!" The carrier snapped up a finger, forestalling the objections of just about everyone within hearing range. "Those are facts, not my opinion. And it is my _opinion_ that keeping Yorktown with us was not the wrong decision."

No one had anything to say to that. And after a few tense, uncomfortable moments, Leyte raised her hand.

"Uh, do we need to decide now?" she asked. "We still need to get to the handoff point…"

Princeton hummed in thought, tapping her chin. "Tight… but I believe that would work, yes," she said. "Though I would be more comfortable if I knew more about the composition of the Abyssal fleet. We may, unshackled in our speed, be able to evade them indefinitely."

The tension slowly bled out of the group, Hornet in particular breathing an internal sigh of relief at having her thoughts on comparative speed confirmed. They still had to make a decision, but the delay was welcomed by everyone.

Especially Enterprise.

~o~

As the task force resumed its run to the south, Enterprise took the time to grapple with the question of Yorktown. As much as she wanted to deny it, Oriskany was right: her sister was slowing them down. Ideally, Yorktown would already be on her way back to port, and thus back to safety, but with that Abyssal fleet menacing them that wasn't an option. She'd be dead the minute she left radar range.

And as she thought things over, one fact became very clear: all the options available resulted in either Yorktown's death or mission failure. Neither was acceptable. Well, all but one option.

Taking a deep breath, Enterprise sighed it out, all the tension and fear and worry and guilt that had dogged her for years flowing out as she made her decision. For the first time since that dark day in December 1941, Enterprise felt truly at peace.

The rest of the task force, though, was not at peace. Their escorts could sense something was wrong, and the destroyers in particular were getting nervous and fidgety. The carriers were, to a ship, miserable and guilty, and Yorktown was the worst of them all, tears streaming down her eyes and fists clenched at her sides. As much as it made Enterprise's heart ache to see her sister like that, she stayed where she was. Her plan, she knew, would cause tremendous grief to Yorktown, and anything other than the truth would simply be empty words.

But she would be alive. And that was what mattered.

Only Alaska and Guam were unaffected, at least on the surface, their grim determination not changing one iota.

Finally, though, they reached the handoff point. Oahu was just barely visible on the horizon to the naked eye, and Alaska and Guam sped up to take point, Salem leading her cruisers and destroyers behind them.

"Keep yourselves safe, okay?" Guam called back as her force left.

For a moment, the assembled shipgirls simply watched Guam and company steam off to the horizon, and then the moment was broken by Yorktown hiccuping.

"I-I guess this is goodbye, huh?" she said sadly, tears starting to stream down her cheeks.

The carriers winced, none of them able to look her in the eye.

"But… you'll die…" Leyte whispered miserably.

"The mission… and the lives of all of you are more important," Yorktown sniffed, reaching up to wipe away the tears.

"She's right," Princeton spoke up, her eyes downcast. "I've been going over the scenarios, and I can't think of a single one where we all survive that…"

Yorktown nodded. "B-Besides," she said with patently false bravado. "Dying's n-not so bad." The bravado fled, and Yorktown hunched in on herself. "I… I should go."

"No."

Yorktown glanced up, taking in Enterprise's golden eyes, glittering with steel - and then a hard object lodged itself in her gut, knocking the wind out of her. "E…" she wheezed, her eyes wide, and then she slumped over on her sister's fist, unconscious.

"Sorry, Yorkie," Enterprise whispered, carefully grabbing her sister's limp form and slinging it over her shoulder. "But this time it's my turn." Steaming up to a stunned Hornet, she held her out.

"Get out of here, all of you," she said, her voice carrying over the sea. "If I find you let Yorkie die on me I'll find you in the afterlife and drag you all down to hell. We clear?"

"Enterprise!" Iwo Jima shouted. "What are you-"

"Are you sure?" Hornet interrupted as she took Yorktown off of the other carrier's hands. "You'll die, just as surely as Yorktown."

"And I can actually delay the Abyssals, scatter them, disorganize them, buy you guys some time," Enterprise retorted, before examining one of her clawed hands. "Besides… if I went back with you guys, I'm not sure how long I'd last before you'd all need to put me down."

"We'd never!" Oriskany protested. "That monster isn't you, Enterprise!"

"It is," she replied, turning on her heel to the north. "And sooner or later it will take me over." Enterprise then turned her head over her shoulder, flashing them a winning, and quite genuine, smile. "It's been fun working with you guys. Say sorry to Hornet and Sara for me, okay?"

Iwo Jima alone tried to protest, but the smile stopped the words in her throat. Only Princeton could find any words.

"One hour," she said, sunlight glinting off her glasses. "Buy us all one hour, and both we and Guam should be free and clear."

"Understood," Enterprise replied as she turned back north, picking up steam. The rest of the carriers departed on their own course, due northeast, seconds later.

It wasn't long before she saw the first signs of Abyssals: picket destroyers, grotesque organic masts growing out of their heads. Though she quickly killed them, she knew that they had sent off her position, and the rest of the Abyssals would not be far behind.

Perfect.

As the main body crested the horizon, Enterprise unlatched her flight deck one last time, and glanced at the fairy that had popped up on her shoulder.

"Thanks, you guys," she said. "Sorry, I couldn't offload you all."

The fairy nodded in approval, and pumped its tiny fist. "Hey!"

"Yeah," Enterprise agreed, her smile widening to more… aggressive proportions. "Come on, you bitches. Do your worst."

Reaching up, she grasped her helmet… and pulled, one last time.

~o~

"And… there we go!"

Taking a step back from the hospital ship USS Relief, Hornet examined her bandaged arm, flexing her fingers experimentally.

"Looks good," she said, flashing Relief a smile. "Thanks."

"Oh, it's not problem!" the hospital ship assured her, even as she started to walk away. "I'm sorry I can't stay, but there are so many patients! Ta-ta!"

Waving goodbye, Hornet took a moment to look around the well deck of the USS Green Bay, one of the San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks the US Navy had converted to a mobile shipgirl repair facility. Shipgirl repair docks lined the after portion of the deck, originally designed to be flooded for landing craft, and all were full. As for Relief, she was merely there for first aid for the less damaged shipgirls. As a hospital ship, she was simply not equipped for a full repair of the 'ship' half of the shipgirl equation, unlike the repair ships, and the latter were in very high demand as it was.

On that front, Hornet counted herself lucky that she was being tended to by Relief. It meant her damage was minor. Many American shipgirls had had to be picked up by helicopter, Osprey, or LCS, lest the suddenly sink on everyone, and even more had been immediately stuffed into the docks upon arrival on the amphibious ships due to heavy damage. Aside from the patch on her arm, Hornet's damage had been largely confined to her ravaged air group.

Her look done, and not in the mood to socialize with the rest of the shipgirls on board, Hornet walked over to the nearest bulkhead and plopped down against it, sighing in relief.

"I could sleep for a week…" she muttered, reaching out and grabbing a pastry from a passing food cart. "And eat an entire ranch."

Taking a bite of the pastry - cherry turnover, nice - her thoughts turned towards her sisters, deployed with the Third Fleet. They were still out there, and she couldn't help but worry a bit about their safety.

And that was the cue for her to suddenly choke on the turnover as an icy lance stabbed her right in the gut.

"W-What the…" she groaned, clutching her gut, the turnover falling to the deck. "E?"

As quickly as the premonition came, it left, and Hornet felt tears start to stream down her cheeks without any apparent cause.

"I… what's going on?" she wondered, wiping away the tears. Her eyes fell on the cherry turnover, sitting pathetically on the deck. "Meh, five-second rule," she muttered, shrugging as she picked it up and popped it in her mouth.

~o~

Hundreds of miles to the north, another force plowed through the North Pacific swells. Composed of slow escort carriers and destroyer escorts, despite sortieing the minute - the actual minute, thank you patrol aircraft - the new Northern Ocean Princess had left her perch, they were still hours behind them. That was fine. They'd already shepherded the Third Fleet's battleships to safety, and they were rapidly bringing the Abyssals into range of their Avengers.

At the center of the escort carrier force was Kitkun Bay. Something was going wrong, she just knew it in her gut, and she ached to launch her planes and start sending Abyssals to the bottom. Just a few more minutes…

" _Hey, Kitkun! I see Oriskany and the rest!"_

That worked, too. Kitkun Bay adjusted course slightly, the rest of her force doing the same in perfect unison. That brought a proud smile to the little carrier's face, pride in the force she'd built and trained.

Their larger fleet cousins and their escorts soon came into sight, but Kitkun Bay's stomach dropped as she noted two important irregularities. First, Yorktown was slung unconscious over Hornet's shoulder. Second, Enterprise was conspicuously absent.

"Where's Enterprise?" Kitkun Bay immediately demanded once the carriers were safely behind the outer screen of destroyer escorts.

The guilt and averted eyes were all that she needed to guess.

"Dammit, Enterprise," she groaned, her hand meeting her face. "And Guam and her task force got through okay?"

Nods all around.

"Alright then," she sighed, straightening and putting her hand to her ear. "All units, we're turning back. Mission accomplished."

A chorus of affirmatives were had over the radio, and slowly the formation swung around, northeast instead of southwest. Though the expected complaints from the carriers didn't come, Kitkun Bay was inclined to just take that as a good thing.

"Good. Get everyone to safety."

Which, of course, meant that they were just waiting to spring something on her.

"What are you doing?!" Kitkun Bay demanded as Hornet, Yorktown passed off to Essex, turned around and began steaming _back the way they'd come_.

"I'm going to go find Enterprise," the carrier replied.

"Are you fucking serious?!" Iwo Jima demanded.

"Even with your luck, the chances of you being able to make a difference are infinitesimal!" Princeton added.

"I'm not going to try and save her!" Hornet snapped, before flinching and looking away. "I… she's already vanished once. Her sisters deserve proper closure this time."

Princeton adjusted her glasses again, letting them glint in the light. "That's much safer, then," she said. "Stay alive, okay?"

Confronted with Princeton's approval of the mad idea, and reminding herself that Hornet still outranked her, Kitkun Bay could only sigh. "Alright, fine. I can't stop you. But if you die, I'm going to kill you."

"Thanks, Kitkun," Hornet replied, shooting the escort carrier a smile and then steaming off into the distance.

Almost immediately, Kitkun Bay flipped back around and glared at the other fast carriers. "Anyone else want to risk life and limb for no good reason?!" she snapped.

"Nope!" Essex denied.

"Stupid…" Princeton drawled.

"What Princeton said," Oriskany replied.

"We're not idiots," Iwo Jima added.

"Yeah, fuck no!"

Leyte wilted under the disbelieving stares of her fellow carriers. "L-Let's just go home, o-okay?"

~o~

"Target acquired," Alaska droned.

Guam nodded; her own Kingfisher had a good view of Pearl Harbor, but her sister's Seahawk, with its radar and modern communications gear, was much better suited to be the targeting hub, leaving her free to just watch. As such, she had a good view of the three Airfield Princesses within the harbor, wailing in pain from the recent bomber strike and their anti-runway-warheaded missiles. The Empress herself was visible in the old Battleship row, parked above the ruins of Arizona's old hull, and clearly howling invectives at the injured Airfield Princesses.

Notably, there were no lesser Abyssals.

"Alright, everyone have the targeting data?" she called out.

"Yes ma'am!" Salem, Des Moines, and Newport News replied, their guns elevating to fire over the intervening mountains of Oahu.

Guam adjusted the elevation of her own guns, her targeting computer feeding her brain the range data acquired from the Seahawk. It took a few minutes, but soon enough she had her solution.

"Fire!" she barked.

The guns of the five cruisers roared in unison, 12" and 8" shells arcing over the mountains. Fairies within Alaska and Guam scrambled to get the guns reloaded, but the automated systems on the heavy cruisers beat them to the punch, sending another salvo of 8" over the mountains.

From her Kingfisher, Guam could see the shells impact. In a move borrowed from the Japanese, the 8" shells were not HC or AP, but proximity-fused AAC that sprayed the Harbor Empress with hot shrapnel. Lacking such a round themselves, she and Guam were firing old-fashioned impact-fuzed HC, but their fire was no less effective, the high explosives battering the Empress even with near misses.

And she was impotent. Tied to one place, any means to strike back systematically removed over the day's battle, the Harbor Empress was limited to the admittedly formidable array of guns she possessed. But they were optimized for anything trying to get into the mouth of the harbor, and depended on her fellow Abyssals and their aircraft to provide targeting over the mountains.

Poor planning, that.

As such, all the Harbor Empress could do was rage and scream and stamp her feet as the shells landed around her, slowly but steadily grinding down her armor. Of course, there was one more force available to her, albeit not under her direct control.

Oahu, and the entire Hawaiian archipelago, was studded with small, hidden bases for PT imps, small, fast Abyssals carrying a single torpedo. Though potentially deadly, they almost never attacked in numbers sufficient to be dangerous, and were thus regarded as mostly a nuisance.

Now, they had the numbers - well, they would if they formed up and attacked at once. PT imps were not terribly smart creatures when not given direction from above, and each bunch simply formed up and charged at the American shipgirls piecemeal, something that the American light cruisers and destroyers did not miss.

"That is a lot of PT imps," Honolulu noted, her radar practically screaming with the number of returns it was getting. She, her sisters, and their destroyers had deployed east of the larger cruisers to intercept the imps coming in from the other islands.

"Yup," Boise replied, popping the 'p'. "Too bad they're charging into a machine-gun nest."

"Reminds me of the Tenaru," Helena mused as she aimed her 6" guns.

The other problem with PT imps was their fragility. A single 5" or 6" HE shell would blow one of them to pieces. As such, when the light cruisers and destroyers opened fire, the front of the black stream of advancing PT imps simply _melted_. From the air, the battle had all the appearance of a long branch being fed into a wood chipper, shells and the occasional torpedo grinding up the leading PT imps.

Despite the horrendous casualties, though, the imps pressed on, their sheer mass bringing them slowly closer and closer. The Americans didn't panic, though, and Helena raised her hand to her ear.

"Black Knights, lasing."

Reaching down, the light cruiser pulled a gun-like device and aimed it at the Abyssals, a little red dot appearing on the head of the lead Abyssal. It promptly came to halt, pawing at the dot, causing a pileup at the front of the stream of imps.

All of which meant they were nice and bunched up when the first bomb landed in the pile, the 250-lb munition shredding multiple imps and sending more flying. Additional bombs landed up and down the line of imps, sending fireballs and Abyssal parts into the sky.

Their momentum destroyed by an invisible enemy, the Abyssals wavered as the shellfire returned, some of the destroyers becoming bold enough to dart away from the cruisers and shoot up imps on the edges of the stream. And then more bombs began landing among the imps, and they lost their nerve entirely.

As one, the imps turned on their heels and fled, destroyers pursuing but quickly breaking off to link back up with the cruisers. And though the imps were gone, the shipgirls remained off to the east of Oahu, just in case the imps regained their nerve, waving to the fighters that darted out of the clouds to waggle their wings in greeting.

More importantly, with the failure of the imps, the last hope of the Harbor Empress was the Northern Ocean Princess' fleet to the north.

And it had its own problems.

~o~

[Kill her! Just kill her already!]

Namely, one red-haired, flight-deck-swinging _annoyance_ that had been carving through the fleet. The Northern Ocean Princess threw up her hands, groaning in frustration, as the two Ri-class heavy cruisers poised to box in the carrier rampaging in _her_ fleet were cleaved in two in one spin move.

[How many Abyssals does it take to kill one lousy carrier?!] she howled, before waving off her remaining forces. [Ah, forget this!]

The Grey Ghost paused in surprise as the Abyssals surrounding her backed off, and then flinched as a light shell bounced off her back. Turning around, she saw the Northern Ocean Princess standing alone on the water, hands cocked on her hips and only a lone gun out.

Naturally, the Grey Ghost couldn't resist an invitation like that.

"Graaaaaawr!"

The carrier-turned-Abyssal dug in her heels and shot forward, mouth open in a fanged howl and flight deck raised to cut down the Princess.

Sadly, it was not to be. The Grey Ghost's charge was arrested by a pair of battleship-caliber shells slamming into her side and exploding, knocking her off her feet and opening up a deep rent in her side. Skidding to a halt, the redhead shakily eased herself up to a kneeling position - and was promptly knocked flat again by a heeled boot to the back of the head, driving her face underwater. And all the shaking and thrashing in the world failed to dislodge the boot.

[Tch…] came a smooth, aristocratic voice from above her. [Slippery little- let's make this a bit easier.]

A hand grasped the Grey Ghost's helm, and yanked her up to her feet, heedless of her growling and flailing claws. Now the redhead could see her assailant black-haired woman wearing black pants and a sleeveless shirt with white eyes and two massive gunshields, one in hand and the other attached to her shoulder, facing back.

Suddenly, pressure pressed in on her helm, and once again no amount of struggling could stop it. The pressure intensified, until finally, with a wail of pain from the Grey Ghost, the helm shattered into pieces, letting Enterprise slump down to the water, suddenly clutching at the wound in her side. Before she could do anything, though, a foot slowly settled onto her back, sending a clear message.

[Goddamn, this thing's heavy as hell! Ow! And sharp, too!]

Glancing behind her, Enterprise saw a Re-class battleship holding up her flight deck and sucking on a cut, bleeding finger. She then turned to the Ru-class battleship looming above her, all guns aimed at her head, and the Northern Ocean Princess running up to her, and sighed.

' _I guess this is it,'_ she thought, smiling as she saw that all the other, lesser Abyssals were giving her a wide berth. ' _Worth it, though. I made the hour. Yorkie… Hornet… I'll see you later…'_

[Hey, you guys did it!] the Northern Ocean Princess chirped. [Good job!]

[Of course, Princess,] the Ru replied, bowing.

[Of course we did. Who the fuck do you think we are?] the Re added, grinning. [So. What're we gonna do with her? I vote we kill her.]

[Mm, tempting,] the Northern Ocean Princess said. [But no! I'm gonna try something the Harbor Empress showed me right before we deployed.]

An inexplicable shiver ran down Enterprise's spine, and her instincts started suddenly blaring at full blast. She didn't know what this Abyssal was about to do, but somehow she knew she didn't want it to succeed, that she would die before she let that happen.

[Princess…] the Ru-class breathed. [You… You've learned Absolute Domination?!]

Well, that wasn't ominous at all. Enterprise's determination not to let whatever that was happen intensified, and she tensed her arms.

[Yup! And she'll be perfect for a test run! She's, like, half Abyssal already!]

"No."

The Abyssals barely had any time to react when Enterprise suddenly bucked upward, throwing the Ru-class on her ass. Bringing her claws up, she saw the childlike Installation and the Re brace for combat - and so they were completely unprepared for Enterprise to slide her claws through her own throat, sending her blood fountaining everywhere.

As Enterprise sank into the sea, a smile on her face. ' _Too bad I couldn't pop off one last one-liner,'_ she mentally sighed. Black crept into her vision, and she let peace wash over her, sinking deeper below the waves.

She was content.

The Abyssals on the surface were, in general, less pleased.

[Oh! That stupid poopyhead!] the Northern Ocean Princess huffed, stomping her feet. [Why'd she have to go and ruin my fun?!]

The Re-class, meanwhile, let out a low whistle. [Hot damn that was hard fucking core,] she said, before clapping her hands together and bowing. [Mad respect, you stupid shipfucker.]

[Well, it's official: this was a complete waste of a trip,] the Ru-class grumbled as she pulled herself to her feet. [The Harbor Empress' death is imminent-]

All three flinched as a psychic howl of rage and agony sounded through the network, and then was suddenly silenced.

[Correction. The Harbor Empress' death just happened,] the Ru-class grumbled, rubbing her head. [We suffered additional casualties we can only barely afford, and all for one lousy carrier. Princess, I recommend we quit while we're behind and head home.]

[Yeah, you're right,] the Northern Ocean Princess sniffed. [This was a waste of time, and we should be heading home! C'mon, girls!]

And so the Abyssals quit the field, bringing the battle to a close.

None of them noticed a blonde head surface where they had just been.

~o~

Sitting at the piers at Naval Base San Diego, Hornet took in a deep breath through her nose, taking in the briny sea air and enjoying the uncommon silence at the berthing slots. Usually bustling with noisy shipgirls, everyone else had long since gone to bed, exhausted by the day's fighting. And though the Yorktown could feel the same bone-deep ache behind her eyes and in her muscles she suspected everyone else felt, she didn't make a move to go to bed. She had to know. She just _had_ to.

The soft sound of rubber on concrete caressed her ears, though she didn't turn around. A pair of metal crutches tapped into her peripheral vision, and Yorktown followed them to the ground, a white, cast-bound leg sticking out over the water.

"She's still not back yet, huh?" the eldest Yorktown asked.

Hornet nodded, not trusting her voice. Left unspoken was _which_ 'she' they were talking about. Two shipgirls remained at large on the ocean, the morning after the end of the battle; Guam and company were still at sea, but were in radio contact.

For hours, the sisters sat on the pier, kicking their legs and watching the sea. Early on in their vigil, the sun had risen at their backs, the steady lightening blue of the seaward sky not as stunning as a true sunrise, but still quite pretty. The full-size ships that had been supporting the battle steamed in over the morning, sailors streaming off to the more comfortable shore berths, and more sailors dropped by with breakfast: hot bagels and hard-boiled eggs and strong Navy coffee.

The sun was just reaching its zenith when a familiar figure rounded Coronado Island. Hornet surged to her feet, swaying back and forth as the other Hornet steamed in, and Yorktown's gaze was laser sharp. It wasn't long before both could see the despondent look on the Essex's face, and with that their resistance… crumbled.

"E…" Hornet whispered, her whole body shaking and tears running down her cheeks. "No… please, no…"

Yorktown didn't say anything, but the creaking of her metal crutches under her grip spoke enough.

The other Hornet glanced up, and flinched, before mouthing two words.

'I'm sorry.'

Hornet slumped to her knees, her whole face scrunching up in grief, and she tilted her head back, looking up to the heavens, wailing. "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

"My fault…" Yorktown whispered beside her, flopping bonelessly onto her back. "This is all my fault. I-I was too weak… I let her die…" Tears joining Hornet's, she raised a fist, and slammed it in into the concrete pier, splintering it, her face twisting into a snarl. "DAMMIT! Dammit…"

Standing at the window of one of the buildings ringing the shorefront, Admiral Holloway sighed and turned away. "Is the modified circle ready?" he asked his secretary ship, the Saipan-class light carrier Wright.

"Yes, sir," she replied. "Shall we have the ceremony prepared?"

The old Admiral took a moment to think it over, and then shook his head. "No," he said. "The new Enterprise will be… a very different person. I think they need to come to terms with that loss."

"As you say, sir."


	10. Epilogue

_Darkness. Water._

 _This is what she had known since she had returned. Yes, returned. That was right, wasn't it? She had returned to this place. After all, it was all naggingly familiar. Well, except for one minor detail._

 _It was empty. The waters were still, where once they had been agitated; darkly blank, where once dots of light could occasionally be sensed. This puzzled her, as did the question of how she knew this, but she paid it no mind. The waters were quiet, peaceful, and too much thought disturbed it. Bliss was the better alternative._

 _And then it sounded. The drums, the whistle: beat to quarters. She was needed once again - and once again it, the call, was familiar. She had done this before. And if she had answered the call once, well, she had no reason not to answer it once again._

 _Slowly she moved up, heading for the surface._

~o~

The mood in the summoning room was tense. Nobody knew if this was going to work, and while the glowing circle was promising, the outcome was still in doubt.

Finally, the band finished, Enterprise still unsummoned, and the effort fell on the shipgirls gathered.

"Please, little E…" Yorktown pleaded, her words barely more than a whisper. "Come back to us. I… I need to..."

"E… come back, please," Hornet also pleaded, her hands warping the railing separating the gallery from the summoning floor. Her mouth opened to continue, but the only sound she produced was the continued shriek of abused metal under her fingers.

"Please, E, I don't want to lose you too," Saratoga whispered from next to the two Yorktown sisters.

"Dammit, I didn't even get to meet you before you kicked the bucket!" snapped the ever-feisty Wasp. "Get back here so I can get to know you properly!"

Lexington remained silent and stoic, her mouth a thin line. Just as silent but no less supportive were the other shipgirls gathered: the remaining American carriers, their battleships, both Northamptons, the First Air Fleet, even Richelieu and Bismarck had managed to find the time to stick around after the memorial service. Faith and longing and respect poured off of them in waves, an almost tangible thing that flowed towards the glowing circle.

And finally, the glow intensified, building into a white flash that exploded outward. And there, standing in the circle when everyone could see again, was a figure. She was shorter than the old Enterprise, her hair cut above the ears and blonde, rather than long and red. Brilliant red eyes completed the color swap. Her features and build were that of a young teenager, rather than a mature twenty-something, softer yet straighter. And her outfit - a white sailor's hat, sleeveless crop-top, and short side-tied skirt - had also changed. And most notably, there were no Abyssal parts: no tacked-on legs, no clawed gloves, and no hat.

"USS Enterprise, CV-6, reporting for duty!" she announced, saluting. And then her serious demeanor promptly evaporated, the saluting hand shifting into a jaunty wave. "Hey, Yorkie, Hornet!"

Admiral Holloway smiled as the two carriers teared up. "Welcome back, Enterprise," he said.

"Back?" He had to admit, the puzzled look on her face was _way_ more adorable with her like this. "Oh, yeah, I- Oof!"

That last exclamation was due to Hornet and Yorktown leaping off the gallery and knocking her down to the ground in a massive hug, sobbing into their resurrected sister's chest.

"We missed you so much, E!" they wailed in unison.

"She was sunk for a week…" Bismarck muttered, earning a cuff upside the head from Richelieu.

"Aheh heh…" Enterprise nervously chuckled. "You guys missed me that much, huh?" Her only response was intensified happy sobbing, and, letting out an indulgent sigh, she settled back and began patting Yorktown's head.

Tearing his eyes away from the happy scene was hard, but Admiral Holloway managed it, glancing back towards the gathered shipgirls. "You aren't going to greet her just yet?"

"Nah," Zuikaku denied, seemingly for everyone. "We need to let 'em have their moment."

The Admiral nodded, and went back to watching the reunion. The road ahead of them was still long, hard, and rocky - but for the first time in a long time, he was confident they, and the rest of the world, could weather it.

~o~

The Submarine Empress grumbled imprecations under her breath as she crested the stinking, muddy banks of the river she'd steamed up. Four Ma-class submarines followed as an honor guard, silent and stoic.

[Who does she think she is, _ordering_ me here like this?] she grumbled, kicking a rock and taking great satisfaction in its journey through the nearest ruined wall. [Then again, I did follow that order…]

It rankled, being bossed around by that _upstart_ , who she'd _created!_ And yet, even as her forces had waned under the full might of the Canadian and American navies, the new Fast Battleship Empress' forces swelled in strength, protected by the very land they had conquered. Answering the summons was the only choice available.

The sight of the charred ruins of the human city, plant life already starting to grow through the intact pavement, cheered her up some. And then it plummeted right back down as her fellow Empress was revealed in the ruins of another square, three of her Princesses at her side. The Fast Battleship Empress was an oddity among the Abyssals; scarred all over her torso and her legs crippled, her throne acted as her means of movement and rigging together. That did not hurt her severe image, though, nor did her long hair tied up in a bun and the relative modesty of her dress combined with a perhaps over-fascination with spikes.

[Alright, I'm here,] the Submarine Empress snapped, coming to a halt and not bowing in deliberate show. [What do you want?]

The Fast Battleship Empress smiled, and it was the sort of smile that reminded her of why she had chosen this particular shipgirl for conversion.

[Oh, nothing much,] she said in perfect Queen's English. [Just a little help in utterly _crushing_ the shipgirls of Europe.]

The Submarine Empress shivered, but a confident smile nonetheless spread over her face.

 _[With her here… yes, we can't lose!]_

[Of course I'll help. As one Empress to another,] she said in reply.

[Good. Here's how we'll start…]

 **AN: And that's a wrap. My first long(ish) fic, complete. It's satisfying, knowing you've written and completed a story.**

 **Now, some of you may be wondering: Hornet, but you didn't answer everything! What about the Fast Battleship Empress? And Revenge? And everything else going on in Europe? This fic is about Enterprise. It was always intended as a limited story. No, Europe will have to wait for the sequel. Yes, the sequel, _Best Served Hot and Smoky._ It's currently in the planning stages, but it's one of the front-runners for my next major project, and I expect to get started on said project sometime after the new year. **


End file.
